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Project Eagle: The American Christians of North Korea in World War II
Robert S. Kim contributes to a fuller understanding of Asia in World War II by revealing the role of American Christian missionary families in the development of the Korean independence movement and the creation of the forgotten alliance between that movement and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), called Project Eagle.
Project Eagle tells the story of the American Christian missionaries in Korea from 1884 to 1942, who brought a new religion, modern education, and American political ideals to a nation conquered and ruled by the Japanese Empire. The missionaries influence inextricably linked Christianity and American-style democracy to Korean nationalism and independence, establishing an especially strong presence in Pyongyang. Project Eagle connects this era for the first time to OSS-Korean cooperation during the war through the story of its central figures, American missionary sons George McCune and Clarence Weems and one of the leading national heroes of Korea, Kim Ku. Project Eagle illuminates the shared history betweenAmericans and Koreans that has remained largely unexamined over the past seventy years. The legacy of these American actions in Korea, ignored by the U.S. government and the academy since 1945, has shaped the relationship of the United States to both North Korea and South Korea and remain crucial to understanding the future of the U.S. relations with both Koreas.
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Project Eagle tells the story of the American Christian missionaries in Korea from 1884 to 1942, who brought a new religion, modern education, and American political ideals to a nation conquered and ruled by the Japanese Empire. The missionaries influence inextricably linked Christianity and American-style democracy to Korean nationalism and independence, establishing an especially strong presence in Pyongyang. Project Eagle connects this era for the first time to OSS-Korean cooperation during the war through the story of its central figures, American missionary sons George McCune and Clarence Weems and one of the leading national heroes of Korea, Kim Ku. Project Eagle illuminates the shared history betweenAmericans and Koreans that has remained largely unexamined over the past seventy years. The legacy of these American actions in Korea, ignored by the U.S. government and the academy since 1945, has shaped the relationship of the United States to both North Korea and South Korea and remain crucial to understanding the future of the U.S. relations with both Koreas.
"
368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2017
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September 17, 2025
This book provides background to a little-known partnership between the US intelligence OSS (Office of Strategic Intelligence) and the Korean Provisional Government (in exile) during World War II.
To tell that story, the author provides background on an era of American missionaries to Korea, in particular in Pyongyang, once known as the Jerusalem of the East. This title reflects the vast number of churches, primarily Presbyterian or Methodist, the portion of the population that identified as Christian, and the schools and hospitals established as part of the missionary movement. The influence of the missionaries and their schools brought both Christianity and importantly western, democratic ideas and ideals to Korea. Additionally, during the early years of the Japanese colonization, these missionaries fostered a core of resistance to the Japanese and kept the embers of an independent Korea alive. The author introduces several key people as background to the second part of the book. These are Kim Ku, leader of the Korean Provisional Government; Clarence Weems, both Senior and Junior, Senior being a famous Methodist missionary, Junior worked for the government during WWII; and George Shannon McCune, a Presbyterian missionary and his son George McAfee McCune, who also worked for the war efforts and put forward the notion that working with the Korean Provisional Government could help fight the Japanese. Both Weems Jr. and the younger McCune grew up in Korea and had extensive knowledge of Korea. Details below. The background information was invaluable and a strength of the book.
The second part of the book provides information about the collaboration between the Korean Provisional Government and its Korean Liberation Army with the OSS. Early in WWII, William Donovan, head of the OSS, wanted to establish operations in Korea. However, ramping up the US forces in the Asian theater, the State Department's antipathy towards Korea, and a poor start, all delayed working together. By 1944, Project Eagle was defined, and training began in 1945. The plan was to train a team of Koreans and U.S. servicemen to infiltrate into Korea to gather information and cause disruptions. Before they could deploy, the war ended. It was quickly rethought to have the team enter Korea, to gather information and find where prisoners of war were held, to ensure they could be released before the onset of the Soviet troops. That too floundered, for reasons explained in the book.
At the end of the war, the US was not focused on Korea and sent in a military commander General Hodge without proper guidance. Though Hodge came to see fervent hopes of Koreans for their independence, he could not abort the State Department’s plans for a trusteeship. Furthermore, because the State Department did not want to use the Korean Provisional Government and because General Douglas MacArthur did not trust the OSS, the knowledge that was available was not shared. These self-inflicted wounds led to the Korean War.
There are several key themes that run through this book
1. American missionaries were a significant force in bringing ideas of both Christianity as well as democracy to Korea. Their impact persists today, and many of the nationalists who fought the Japanese were influenced by these new ideas.
2. The US State Department (and government in general) ignored Korean requests for help. In the late 1880s, the last king of Korea asked for assistance; his request was ignored. During WWII, Kim Ku of the Korean Provisional Government repeated offers to help and wanted to help free his homeland. Again, these requests were ignored. In the aftermath of WWII, information and help from Koreans were shunned by the US government.
FB. While the book brings to light little know events, people, and history in pre-colonial, colonial and WWII Korea, and is filled with detailed information and insights, the author’s repetition on these themes is akin to repeated strikes of a Korean bell to ensure the reader hears the message.
DETAILS
The author focuses on three individuals to provide context to the OSS-Korean mission.
Kim Ku, born into a poor family north of Pyongyang, rose to become a leader of the independence movement against the Japanese, and later the head of the Korean Provisional Government. After World War II, he became a Korean reunification activist. Spurned by the US, he ultimately lost to Syngman Rhee in the presidential elections in 1948. He was assassinated in 1949, in what many believe was an ordered hit by the Korean government. He is still revered in South Korea.
His autobiography, Paekpom Ilchi (Paekpŏm ilchi) was translated into English in 2000 by Jongsoo Lee. It details his life and his crucial role in the Korean independence movement.
Clarence N (Norwood) Weems (Senior) arrived in Korea in the fall of 1909, with a wife and two children, including two-year-old Clarence Weems Jr. Weems senior settled initially in Songdo, now Kaesong, and spent twenty-three years with the Methodist mission (1909-1932). During this time, he presided over the building of 32 churches, 24 temporary houses of worship, and 18 parsonages. He also served as principal of the Songdo Higher Common School, the largest Methodist school for boys in Korea, and founded two grad schools. After a brief sabbatical attending the Duke University Divinity School, he returned to Korea and led the mission in Wonsan from 1933 to 1940.
In 1932, the Japanese required all schools to have their students, teachers, and administrators attend ceremonies at Shinto shrines. Ultimately, the Presbyterian churches saw this requirement as imposing the state religion of Imperial Japan on Christian schools, so they closed them in 1937-1938. The Methodists accepted the explanation that the ceremonies were patriotic, not religious.
Weems returned to the US in July 1940, thinking he’d return.
His four sons — David, Clarence Jr, William, and Benjamin — grew up in Songdo, attending the Songdo School for Foreign Students, and moved to the US for prep school and higher education. Each would return to Korea. David was briefly on a mission in Korea. William returned to Korea after the Korean War to help rebuild Seoul National University engineering college, and later direct the Industrial Development Center of Korea. Benjamin became a noted scholar of Korea, lived most of his life and is buried there.
Clarence Jr. initially thought he’d be a scholar of Korea, but life intervened. He did, however, serve in various positions, both as a civilian and as a commissioned officer in the military or OSS, both during WWII, where he helped facilitate Project Eagle, and as part of the United States Military Government in Korea after WWII.
George Shannon McCune was a Presbyterian missionary who worked in Pyongyang, off and on, from 1905 to 1936. When he arrived, he because a leading figure in the growth of schools that the Presbyterian Church was creating in Pyongyang and northern Korea, serving first as superintendent of Presbyterian schools in Pyongyang. Later he served as acting president of Union Christian College.
As an interesting note, while McCune was serving as president, Kim Hyong Jik, a fourteen-year-old boy from a nearby village, attended Sugshil Middle Schools. Kim, a Presbyterian and independence activist, later married the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and in 1912 had a son named Kim Song Ju, later Kim Il Sung.
The Pyongyang Revival of 1907 began when he was one of forty-six Presbyterian missionaries in Korea. During this time, many conversions began among Koreans.
He later became principal of the Hugh O’Neill Jr Industrial Academy in Sonchon (then Syenchun), a city approximately one hundred miles northwest of Pyongyang. The school, also called Sin sung Academy, was one of the leading institutions in the heavily Christian city, half Christian by 1911. This became a hotbed of Christianity and nationalism. Though McCune tried to stay neutral, he and 19 American missionaries with 122 Koreans—98 of them Christians—were accused of planning to assassinate the governor-general. Though the charges were dropped against him and the other American missionaries, 105 of the 122 Korean detainees were sentenced to prison time of two to ten years. This “Conspiracy Case of 1911” was a turning point for George Shannon McCune, as his sermons became increasingly strident. Then, he also was a target of the Japanese regime. In 1923, for various reasons, he returned to the US. But he returned to Korea in 1927, as head of the leading institution of higher education in Pyongyang and co-pastor in a major church. But by 1936, he refused to compromise his religious principles and left Korea.
McCune had two sons, both of whom were devoted to Korea.
George McAfee “Mac” McCune was a scholar of Korea. He is known, with his collaborators Edwin O. Reischauer, for the McCune-Reischauer system for the romanization of the Korean script. Later he taught Korean history and language at Occidental College and the University of California, Berkeley. During the war, he worked as a social science analyst in the OSS. Later he was appointed as an officer on the Korea Desk in the State Department. During those years, he was "generally recognized as the government's leading expert on Korean affairs.” (Wikipedia)
When he arrived in DC, he saw that the Korean cause was poorly understood. Using his knowledge, experience, and connections with the Korean expatriate community, between March and April 1942 he completed a two-report study for the government. The first report was on Korean history and the current state of the Korean independence movement; the second, on the potential for Korean assistance in the war against Japan. He concluded that Koreans had the potential to contribute significantly to the Allied cause against Japan. He acknowledged the difficulty in reconciling different groups.
His brother, Shannon Boyd-Baley McCune, who was born in Korea, was a geographer and ultimately the president of the University of Vermont. He was also civil administrator of the Ryukyu Islands from 1962 to 1964. He publishes several books on Korea.
To tell that story, the author provides background on an era of American missionaries to Korea, in particular in Pyongyang, once known as the Jerusalem of the East. This title reflects the vast number of churches, primarily Presbyterian or Methodist, the portion of the population that identified as Christian, and the schools and hospitals established as part of the missionary movement. The influence of the missionaries and their schools brought both Christianity and importantly western, democratic ideas and ideals to Korea. Additionally, during the early years of the Japanese colonization, these missionaries fostered a core of resistance to the Japanese and kept the embers of an independent Korea alive. The author introduces several key people as background to the second part of the book. These are Kim Ku, leader of the Korean Provisional Government; Clarence Weems, both Senior and Junior, Senior being a famous Methodist missionary, Junior worked for the government during WWII; and George Shannon McCune, a Presbyterian missionary and his son George McAfee McCune, who also worked for the war efforts and put forward the notion that working with the Korean Provisional Government could help fight the Japanese. Both Weems Jr. and the younger McCune grew up in Korea and had extensive knowledge of Korea. Details below. The background information was invaluable and a strength of the book.
The second part of the book provides information about the collaboration between the Korean Provisional Government and its Korean Liberation Army with the OSS. Early in WWII, William Donovan, head of the OSS, wanted to establish operations in Korea. However, ramping up the US forces in the Asian theater, the State Department's antipathy towards Korea, and a poor start, all delayed working together. By 1944, Project Eagle was defined, and training began in 1945. The plan was to train a team of Koreans and U.S. servicemen to infiltrate into Korea to gather information and cause disruptions. Before they could deploy, the war ended. It was quickly rethought to have the team enter Korea, to gather information and find where prisoners of war were held, to ensure they could be released before the onset of the Soviet troops. That too floundered, for reasons explained in the book.
At the end of the war, the US was not focused on Korea and sent in a military commander General Hodge without proper guidance. Though Hodge came to see fervent hopes of Koreans for their independence, he could not abort the State Department’s plans for a trusteeship. Furthermore, because the State Department did not want to use the Korean Provisional Government and because General Douglas MacArthur did not trust the OSS, the knowledge that was available was not shared. These self-inflicted wounds led to the Korean War.
There are several key themes that run through this book
1. American missionaries were a significant force in bringing ideas of both Christianity as well as democracy to Korea. Their impact persists today, and many of the nationalists who fought the Japanese were influenced by these new ideas.
2. The US State Department (and government in general) ignored Korean requests for help. In the late 1880s, the last king of Korea asked for assistance; his request was ignored. During WWII, Kim Ku of the Korean Provisional Government repeated offers to help and wanted to help free his homeland. Again, these requests were ignored. In the aftermath of WWII, information and help from Koreans were shunned by the US government.
FB. While the book brings to light little know events, people, and history in pre-colonial, colonial and WWII Korea, and is filled with detailed information and insights, the author’s repetition on these themes is akin to repeated strikes of a Korean bell to ensure the reader hears the message.
DETAILS
The author focuses on three individuals to provide context to the OSS-Korean mission.
Kim Ku, born into a poor family north of Pyongyang, rose to become a leader of the independence movement against the Japanese, and later the head of the Korean Provisional Government. After World War II, he became a Korean reunification activist. Spurned by the US, he ultimately lost to Syngman Rhee in the presidential elections in 1948. He was assassinated in 1949, in what many believe was an ordered hit by the Korean government. He is still revered in South Korea.
His autobiography, Paekpom Ilchi (Paekpŏm ilchi) was translated into English in 2000 by Jongsoo Lee. It details his life and his crucial role in the Korean independence movement.
Clarence N (Norwood) Weems (Senior) arrived in Korea in the fall of 1909, with a wife and two children, including two-year-old Clarence Weems Jr. Weems senior settled initially in Songdo, now Kaesong, and spent twenty-three years with the Methodist mission (1909-1932). During this time, he presided over the building of 32 churches, 24 temporary houses of worship, and 18 parsonages. He also served as principal of the Songdo Higher Common School, the largest Methodist school for boys in Korea, and founded two grad schools. After a brief sabbatical attending the Duke University Divinity School, he returned to Korea and led the mission in Wonsan from 1933 to 1940.
In 1932, the Japanese required all schools to have their students, teachers, and administrators attend ceremonies at Shinto shrines. Ultimately, the Presbyterian churches saw this requirement as imposing the state religion of Imperial Japan on Christian schools, so they closed them in 1937-1938. The Methodists accepted the explanation that the ceremonies were patriotic, not religious.
Weems returned to the US in July 1940, thinking he’d return.
His four sons — David, Clarence Jr, William, and Benjamin — grew up in Songdo, attending the Songdo School for Foreign Students, and moved to the US for prep school and higher education. Each would return to Korea. David was briefly on a mission in Korea. William returned to Korea after the Korean War to help rebuild Seoul National University engineering college, and later direct the Industrial Development Center of Korea. Benjamin became a noted scholar of Korea, lived most of his life and is buried there.
Clarence Jr. initially thought he’d be a scholar of Korea, but life intervened. He did, however, serve in various positions, both as a civilian and as a commissioned officer in the military or OSS, both during WWII, where he helped facilitate Project Eagle, and as part of the United States Military Government in Korea after WWII.
George Shannon McCune was a Presbyterian missionary who worked in Pyongyang, off and on, from 1905 to 1936. When he arrived, he because a leading figure in the growth of schools that the Presbyterian Church was creating in Pyongyang and northern Korea, serving first as superintendent of Presbyterian schools in Pyongyang. Later he served as acting president of Union Christian College.
As an interesting note, while McCune was serving as president, Kim Hyong Jik, a fourteen-year-old boy from a nearby village, attended Sugshil Middle Schools. Kim, a Presbyterian and independence activist, later married the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and in 1912 had a son named Kim Song Ju, later Kim Il Sung.
The Pyongyang Revival of 1907 began when he was one of forty-six Presbyterian missionaries in Korea. During this time, many conversions began among Koreans.
He later became principal of the Hugh O’Neill Jr Industrial Academy in Sonchon (then Syenchun), a city approximately one hundred miles northwest of Pyongyang. The school, also called Sin sung Academy, was one of the leading institutions in the heavily Christian city, half Christian by 1911. This became a hotbed of Christianity and nationalism. Though McCune tried to stay neutral, he and 19 American missionaries with 122 Koreans—98 of them Christians—were accused of planning to assassinate the governor-general. Though the charges were dropped against him and the other American missionaries, 105 of the 122 Korean detainees were sentenced to prison time of two to ten years. This “Conspiracy Case of 1911” was a turning point for George Shannon McCune, as his sermons became increasingly strident. Then, he also was a target of the Japanese regime. In 1923, for various reasons, he returned to the US. But he returned to Korea in 1927, as head of the leading institution of higher education in Pyongyang and co-pastor in a major church. But by 1936, he refused to compromise his religious principles and left Korea.
McCune had two sons, both of whom were devoted to Korea.
George McAfee “Mac” McCune was a scholar of Korea. He is known, with his collaborators Edwin O. Reischauer, for the McCune-Reischauer system for the romanization of the Korean script. Later he taught Korean history and language at Occidental College and the University of California, Berkeley. During the war, he worked as a social science analyst in the OSS. Later he was appointed as an officer on the Korea Desk in the State Department. During those years, he was "generally recognized as the government's leading expert on Korean affairs.” (Wikipedia)
When he arrived in DC, he saw that the Korean cause was poorly understood. Using his knowledge, experience, and connections with the Korean expatriate community, between March and April 1942 he completed a two-report study for the government. The first report was on Korean history and the current state of the Korean independence movement; the second, on the potential for Korean assistance in the war against Japan. He concluded that Koreans had the potential to contribute significantly to the Allied cause against Japan. He acknowledged the difficulty in reconciling different groups.
His brother, Shannon Boyd-Baley McCune, who was born in Korea, was a geographer and ultimately the president of the University of Vermont. He was also civil administrator of the Ryukyu Islands from 1962 to 1964. He publishes several books on Korea.
May 25, 2025
Project Eagle provides a concise history of Korea at the beginning of the 20th century, the Christian communities of North Korea, followed by the history of the Korean Provisional Government located in Shanghai and Chongqing, the Korean Restoration Army based in Xi’an, OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) bird-named operations to rescue Allied prisoners from China, and an interesting history of Project NAPKO’s use of the unique GIMIK boat. Pretty neat! This is a fascinating and well-researched read for those who are interested in history, military history, Korea, or China.
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