Our research & why the name "kimwha"?

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Kimwha.org's starting point is research on the life of Victor Wellington Peters and Hahn Heung Bok.  This is because I, Byron Siemsen, am one of the grandsons of the Peters.

In our family's collection are 100s of letters of correspondence, writings, diaries and photographs.

Kimwha is the town where VWP and Hahn Heung Bok served just prior to WWII.  The church was destroyed during the Korean war and rubble remains to this day where it stood.

Kimwha resides near the DMZ and will be an important town when the two Koreas finally reunify.

Our family is one of a handful of families that has had a virtually uninterrupted ministry amongst Koreans extending back to the "colonial era".  The Peters' daughter, Elona along with her husband Armon Siemsen served briefly in Korea in 1967-1968.  The family in the United States has been involved in various roles in the diaspora Korean church.

Active research into the lives of each missionary to Korea prior to 1946 is ongoing.  Effort is being made to collect as many primary resources as possible about each missionary.  My approach of discovery includes interacting directly with the descendants of missionaries when at all possible to round out more completely our understanding of each missionary.

The advantage of interacting with me is that I have the most comprehensive list of missionaries to Korea and can offer the researcher a quick and easy way to verify and/or correct information.  I can also help them pursue leads, and better understand the nuances of missionary thought.  Reliance upon current literature can lead to many errors persisting which can easily be fact-checked through my resources.

Furthermore, interacting directly with descendants of missionaries, some of which are evangelical missionaries themselves, allows the researcher to create a fuller and more accurate picture of who these missionaries were and what motivated them.