Greetings from the NJ Transit passenger carriage. As I write, I’m chugging through America’s finest state, launched from the bustle of New York City and through bucolic towns like Elizabeth and Rahway en route to Princeton Junction.
I spent the past week in the big city, bringing news of the advent of KOREAN MESSIAH to the world. It was a busy run of book talks, with plenty of smart questions and the occasional oohs and ahs from the student groups, church groups, and cultural groups that I presented the book to.
I’m relieved to report the reception has been warm. I’ve never spent more than a decade on any one task, and while I was astounded by what I stumbled upon, you’re never entirely sure if others will share your enthusiasm until you release it to the world.
It was thus gratifying to see the New York Times’ review—“truly informative, wholly serious and sometimes humorous”—and to have readers send me favorite snippets as they plow through the first chapters of the book.
The week began with a “friends and colleagues” launch party hosted by colleague James T AREDDY, and ended with a thought-provoking session at Redeemer Presbyterian Church with Michael Luo and Laura Podesta. In between, I shared the stage with Barbara Demick at The Korea Society and Julian Gewirtz and Orville Schell at Asia Society, and presented the book to students and faculty at Fordham University and Columbia University. Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) also hosted me for a pair of events.
I popped by Eurasia Group offices for a rapid-fire session with Ian Bremmer, and had the pleasure of meeting Jerome Sauvage, the U.N. resident coordinator in North Korea from 2009 to 2013 and author of an upcoming memoir.
Jerome welcomed me at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, where more than a century earlier Horace G. Underwood, brother of the eponymous typewriter magnate, had been dispatched to Korea as one of the first missionaries to take up residence there; he arrived on Easter Sunday 1885, and went on to build the great Christian institutions that dominate Seoul today.
Brooklyn was also home to the man who, in 1884, made the initial $6,000 donation that seeded Protestant missions work in Korea (as detailed on p. 38 of the book). Within a few years, Brooklyn entered the picture again—this time to show how thoroughly Christianity had suffused Pyongyang. On Sunday mornings, one missionary wrote, the tolling of church bells there was so vivid that “you can shut your eyes and almost imagine you are standing on Brooklyn Bridge at 10 A.M.” (p. 80).
As for Princeton, it’s where I spent my undergraduate years—and where Samuel H. Moffett, son of Pyongyang’s first resident missionary, lived and taught, later donating his father’s archival stash to the seminary library—a key source for KOREAN MESSIAH.
So it’s good to be back at Old Nassau. I’ll be here for a few days before heading to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. If you’re around, I’d love to see you.