Julius Helm: A Prussian Farmer in Joseon (part One)

The pages of late 19th century Korean history are sprinkled with the names of Westerners. Usually they are nothing more than footnotes, mysterious but often boring ? name, nationality and the period they were in Korea. Julius Helm is one of those footnotes ? a footnote that needs to be expanded upon.

In 1885, Julius Helm was an imposing Prussian both in stature ? he was over six feet tall ? and personality. Born in Rosow (north of Berlin) in 1840, he lived a rather simple, if not hard, life. His schooling ended when he was 14 and he was sent to the fields to work as a laborer ? work began at three in the morning and often ended at 11 at night.

During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, he served in Prussia's First Army and distinguished himself. But once the war was over, he returned to the life of a laborer. It wasn't the life he desired. According to his great-grandson, Leslie Helm, the family often joked that the reason Helm had left Germany in 1868 was to run away from a marriage but it was much more than that ? it was the desire for adventure and to make his own fortune.

Helm first went to the United States where he worked on farms in Minnesota but things did not work out. Arguments with fellow laborers, an invitation to marry an Irish girl and witnessing a gruesome accident involving a thresher convinced Helm that the United States was not the answer to his dreams. He had to seek his fortune elsewhere. He chose China.

But the fickleness of fate changed his plans. The ship going to China had just left and, with no other choice, he booked passage aboard The Golden Age in 1869 ? a steam and sail-powered ship ? going to Yokohama, the wild west of Japan. The voyage from San Francisco was not easy. Near Japan they encountered a typhoon that nearly took his life. It left the ship badly damaged so that it limped into Yokohama.

For two years he worked as a constable at the American consulate and as a warehouse keeper ? living frugally and saving his meager earnings. But one day, in 1871, his fate changed. Helm found himself in front of Max August Scipio von Brandt, the German consul general to Yokohama. In his book, Leslie Helm wrote:

A German sergeant named Carl Koppen was in the process of transforming a band of sword-bearing samurai into a modern army. 'Before Koppen came, we were barbarians,' von Brandt had heard one Japanese officer say. 'Now we are like Europeans. We want to become...