Durham Stevens - Assassination

Assassination

Stevens returned to the United States in March 1908 to visit his family in Washington, D.C. and vacation with his sisters at a cottage they owned in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Upon his arrival, he gave an interview with a San Francisco newspaper in which he stated that the common people of Korea were benefiting from the increasing Japanese presence in their country. These statements provoked the ire of two local associations of Koreans, the Daedong Bogukhoe and the Independence Club, who held a joint meeting in which they agreed that something had to be done about Stevens. On March 22, 1908, four Korean men chosen by the associations accosted Stevens at the Fairmont Hotel, where he was staying. Their leader, a man by the name of Earl Lee who was described as fluent in English, asked him if he had indeed made the statements attributed to him in the newspaper, and whether "Japanese were not killing off the Koreans". He answered yes to the first question and no to the second, then proceeded to tell Lee that he had "probably been too long away from his country to know the exact condition of the Government." Upon this, the four men began to strike Stevens with chairs, knocking him down and causing him to strike his head against the marble flooring; Stevens backed up against the wall until help arrived. After the assault, Lee was quoted as saying, "We are all very sorry that we did not do more to him."

The following day, Jang In-hwan and Jeon Myeong-un, both Korean immigrants to the United States, approached Stevens at the Port of San Francisco as he prepared catch a ferry to make a rail connection in Oakland and attacked him. Jeon fired his revolver at Stevens first, but missed, and instead rushed at him, using his weapon as a club to hit Stevens in the face. Jang then fired into the melee, striking Stevens twice in the back; Jeon was also shot in the confusion. The crowd which had gathered urged that they be lynched on the spot; Jang was arrested and held without bail on a charge of murder, while Jeon was first hospitalized, and later charged as an accessory. In newspaper interviews after the attack, both Jeon and Jang offered no apology for the assassination, describing Stevens as a "traitor to Korea" and stating that "thousands of people have been killed through his plans".

One bullet had penetrated Stevens' lung, while another lodged in his groin; however, surgeons at the St. Francis Hospital initially expected that he would be able to make a recovery, and on the day of the attack he was apparently in good enough health to issue a statement to the press that the assault was "evidently the work of a small band of student agitators in and about San Francisco, who resent the fact that the Japanese have a protectorate over Korea and believe that I am to some extent responsible for this condition of affairs in their country". However, his condition began to deteriorate on the morning of March 25. His doctors, seeing signs of inflammation in his wounds, placed him under anaesthesia and began to perform surgery at six that evening. He never regained consciousness after that, and died shortly after 11 PM, with Japanese Consul Chozo Koike at his bedside. He was buried in his hometown of Washington, D.C. after a funeral service at St. John's Episcopal Church; Secretary of State Elihu Root was among his pallbearers.