In this book Wayne Patterson, a prolific writer on US-Korean relations and Korean immigration to America, has provided a richly empirical and detailed account of the Korean sojourn of William Franklin Sands (1874–1946), an American diplomat, academic, and one-time advisor to the government of the Korean Empire (1897–1910). The author portrays Sands as an unconventional American diplomat turned loyal Korean public servant who tried his best to contribute to the development of the Korean Empire in its twilight years. The content of William Franklin Sands runs parallel to the span of Sands’s 1930s memoirs, titled Undiplomatic Memories: The Far East 1896–1904.1 However, Patterson’s book does not rely much on Sands’s later published account, as the author intended it “not as a substitute, but rather as a companion, to his memoir” (viii).
W. F. Sands obtained a bachelor of arts and a bachelor of laws at Georgetown University before...
