As Hugh Cynn struggled on four fronts as student, pastor, independence fighter and family breadwinner, he and fellow Koreans scattered across the anti-Oriental West were hearing grim tidings from their homeland.

In 1905, the hapless kingdom became a protectorate of Japan after Japan won the Russo-Japanese War in Korea’s backyard. Pro-Japanese mercenaries, including American Durham White Stevens, were hired to take charge of diplomatic and financial affairs. And U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt signed a secret treaty with Japan agreeing to accept the Japanese invasion of Korea in return for Japan’s guarantee of American hegemony over the Philippines Islands.

In March 1908, Koreans in San Francisco were outraged by the news of Stevens’ arrival on a propaganda tour claiming that Japan was helping to modernize a corrupt and backward kingdom. Angry young men Chang In-hwan and Chun Myung-woon, both members of the Korean Methodist Church there, gunned him down the next day.

The subsequent Stevens assassination trial galvanized Koreans in Hawaii and the mainland, spawning rising Christian nationalism.

Los Angeles Koreans — mostly students, house servants and store helpers — quickly rallied to defend the pair on trial and raise money. They also decided to send college student and pastor Cynn as a spokesperson for the voiceless immigrants to deal with the English-speaking outside world.

Revered as a patriot among his fellow Koreans, Chang In-hwan died in 1930 at age 55 and was buried in San Francisco’s Cypress Cemetery. His remains were flown to Seoul in 1975 and were buried in the National Cemetery for patriots and martyrs.

Under the headline "How Stevens Won Enemy," the Los Angeles Times in its March 25, 1908, issue reported, "Hugh Cynn said that he is Christian and his religion commands him not to kill and forbearance, yet he didn’t believe his God would forbid him to kill Stevens who was described as a wretched scoundrel, enemy of Korea and the civilized world."

Cynn’s advocate role during the trial was but the first of more than 22 international missions he carried out as a delegate for Korean independence and the YMCA of Korea during the 1911-1945 period.

A wunderkind of this stormy era who spoke English, Chinese, Japanese and German, Cynn was the most traveled representative among such early American-educated protégés of patriot Philip Jaisohn. His far-ranging tours covered China, Manchuria, Russia, Japan, Switzerland, England, France, Canada, Palestine and Denmark.

In 1926, Cynn and his former teacher and mentor Jaisohn were reunited at the 1926 Pan-Pacific Conference in Hawaii, where nations bordering the Pacific had met to discuss mutual concerns. The pair scored a parliamentary victory to get even with the Japanese rulers. At the conference, Cynn, who headed the Korean delegation, and Jaisohn, who, along with his wife, was invited by both the Korean National Association and Hawaii Koreans, talked all night on the conditions of Korea and its future course.

In his definitive biography of Jaisohn, author Channing Liem, Jaisohn’s longtime secretary and later Korean ambassador to the United Nations, describes the pair’s dramatic confrontation with the Japanese delegates and their "victories" at conference sessions.