A rebellious child of the feudal times, Han-Kyung Chung at age 14 hungrily embraced the new wave of enlightenment from those who had returned to the dying Hermit Kingdom after years abroad.

One day, in an act of defiance, the son of a rich merchant cut off his topknot and decided to go to America for an education. The boy wonder, who had mastered the 12-volume Chinese classic “Tale of Three Nations,” sailed for the New World in 1904, leaving behind his mother and grandmother heartbroken.

Like most of his peers with limited English in the white-dominated America, the teenager hopped from job to job as a houseboy in his rapid ascent on the educational ladder. He skipped classes in high school, but still managed to become class valedictorian. After earning his master’s degree from the University of Nebraska, he obtained a doctorate at American University, becoming the second Korean, next to Dr. Syngman Rhee, to obtain a Ph.D. in the United States.

Along with his mentor Rhee, Chung (who would later change his name to Henry Chung DeYoung) worked with modern Korea’s icon, Dr. Philip Jaisohn (the first Korean to become a medical doctor) in pleading Korea’s independence cause at various international conferences. He was a member of the Korean Mission to the Conference on Limitation of Armament in Washington, D.C., in 1921, and a member of the U.S.-European Commission of Korea under the Korean exile government in Shanghai. He was also selected to be part of the three-man delegation to attend the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris.

Later Rhee invited DeYoung to join the Korean Commission in the nation’s capital as a diplomatic arm of the exile government. After the commission ran out of funds in 1921, DeYoung ran a successful enterprise selling food products and eventually retired in Colorado Springs.

At Kearney High School in Kearney, Neb., DeYoung excelled in his classes and became the class valedictorian, despite the fact he missed days from school to work. He is shown here in 1911 in his chemistry lab…

One of the most erudite and glamorous of the Korean elites in exile, DeYoung authored Korean Treaties, The Oriental Policy of the U.S., The Case of Korea and The Russians Came to Korea. In the post-liberation Korea, he served as the first Korean ambassador to Tokyo during Rhee’s regime in 1948.

Just a month short of turning 90, DeYoung, along with his second wife Zona, met with Korean American historians Harold and Sonia Sunoo at the DeYoung’s home in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 1979.

“This well-preserved, handsome gentleman was cordial and willing to share his amazing experience, which began as a youth growing up in Pyong-an Province,” recalled the Sunoos in their Korea Kaleidoscope, which represents volume one of the Korean Oral History Project. At the time of the interview, the DeYoungs had four grown children, all professionals, including an adopted Korean orphan.

HERE IS HENRY DEYOUNG’S STORY, IN HIS OWN WORDS, COMPILED BY KOEUM KIM FROM DEYOUNG’S 1979 INTERVIEW WITH THE SUNOOS:

I left Korea in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War (at the age of 14). … I landed in San Francisco, and four Koreans came to see [me] because American immigration officials informed them of my coming. They [included] Ahn Jung Soo, Park Yong Man, who came to America a few months earlier, and the late, great Ahn Chang Ho.