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.
Read more about this topic: Durham Stevens
Famous quotes containing the words reaction to, reaction and/or death:
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“An actor must communicate his author’s given message—comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.”
—Eleanor Robson Belmont (1878–1979)
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)