Seoul City Sue - Korean Mission and China

Korean Mission and China

That same year, she was selected for a mission to Korea by the Southern Methodist Conference. There, she initially taught at a Methodist school. By the early 1930s, the Japanese colonial administration had largely banned foreigners from Christian proselytizing, and most Christian missions focused on education, medicine, and care for the indigent. She may have returned to the US in 1935 to visit a sister. In late 1936, she was appointed to serve at the Seoul Social Evangelistic Center, and in February 1937, visited Scarritt College during a missionary furlough.

In a move that may have reflected increasingly harsh Japanese measures against foreign missionaries in the late 30s, Anna relocated to China to join the staff of the Shanghai American School (SAS) in 1938. There she met Sŏ Kyu Ch’ŏl, who was hired to teach Korean and assist in school administration. She was dropped from the rolls of the missionary service and lost her United States citizenship after they married. She developed an interest in Korean politics, eventually taking up her husband's leftist views. The cosmopolitan Shanghai International Settlement and French Concession were likely a more accepting environment for the Suhs than homogeneous 1940s Korea would later prove to be, as suggested by the number of other Caucasian women on staff married to Asian men. In 1939, she visited San Francisco in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a US passport for her husband.