Durham Stevens - Reaction To Death

Reaction To Death

News of Stevens' assassination was greeted with sorrow in diplomatic circles in Japan and among American missionaries in Korea, to whom Stevens was well known; United States Ambassador to Japan Thomas O'Brien was quoted as saying that "the utmost grief is expressed by everyone", adding that he counted Stevens as a "true and useful friend". Yale University professor George Trumbull Ladd, in a letter to the editor of The New York Times, denounced the attacks as "cowardly and shockingly brutal", calling Koreans a "bloody race" and, comparing the Stevens case to a number of other assaults in Korea, such as that against American missionary George Heber Jones, concluded that politically motivated murders were not "an isolated or at all peculiar experience" in Korea, and stated that the events "furnish an instructive object lesson for the correct estimation of the Korean character and the Korean method of self-government".

Jang and Jeon both stood trial for Stevens' murder separately, as there was insufficient evidence to prove they had conspired with each other; Jeon was quickly acquitted of charges. The Korean community hired three lawyers to defend Jang, among whom one, Nathan Coughlan, eventually agreed to take on the case pro bono. During the trial, he planned to use Arthur Schopenhauer's theory of "patriotic insanity" to argue that Jang was not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury found Jang guilty of second-degree murder on 23 December of that same year. Later Korean accounts describe Stevens as a traitor to Korea and refer to Jeon and Jang as patriots and heroes.