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| Jennifer Taylor, granddaughter of Albert Taylor, the first U.S. journalist to report on the March 1, 1919, independence movement by Koreans against Japan, looks at the restored home of her grandfather in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
The Seoul Metropolitan Government said, Thursday, that it has restored a house of Albert W. Taylor, a journalist from the United States who first reported on the 1919 March 1 Independence Movement against Japan to the world, and would open it to the public as a historical exhibition hall starting Friday.
The opening has come about 80 years after the Japanese authorities expelled Taylor and his family from Korea in 1942.
Jennifer Linley Taylor, Taylor's granddaughter, was invited, Thursday, to a pre-opening event of the house, which the grandparents named "Dilkusha," meaning "heart's delight" in Hindi. She donated her grandparents' belongings to the Seoul Museum of History in 2016.
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| The restored home of Albert Taylor, the first U.S. journalist to report on the March 1, 1919, independence movement by Koreans against Japan, in Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap |
She said if her grandfather had seen it, he would have been very surprised and delighted.
On March 1, 1919, Albert Taylor, who had stayed in Seoul as a correspondent for the Associated Press, reported the Korean Declaration of Independence abroad, affirming the Korean people's will for independence from the Japanese occupation.
When his wife gave birth to her son at Severance Hospital in Seoul on Feb. 28 of the year, he happened to find a copy of the declaration which called for an uprising against Japanese colonial rule the next day, hidden under his wife's bed sheets. He hid it under the bed of his newborn son, and reported on it, avoiding the eyes of Japanese soldiers who had raided the hospital.
The city government signed an agreement with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Cultural Heritage Administration, and Jongno District Office in 2016 to restore Dilkusha to its original form, and began restoration work in 2018 after historical research.
The completed Dilkusha exhibition hall is constructed with one basement level and two ground levels. The city government recreated the living rooms on the first and second floors based on six photos taken when the Taylor couple was living there, and the rest of the spaces, photos of which had not been left, have been turned into exhibition rooms that highlight the Taylor family's life in Korea and Albert Taylor's media activities.
