Dilkusha, the red-brick house on a Haengchon-dong hill, bears a Sanskrit-derived name generally interpreted as “Palace of Delight.” Albert Wilder Taylor and Mary Linley Taylor built it in 1923. Its Western exterior can make it seem like a simple relic of affluent expatriate life under colonial rule. Its fuller history, however, links the international reporting of Korea's independence movement with war, incarceration, expulsion, and the lives of multiple Korean households that occupied the building after liberation.
The Declaration of Independence reached the world through more than one dramatic discovery in a hospital bed
Accounts say that Albert encountered a copy of the Korean Declaration of Independence at Severance Hospital in 1919 while awaiting the birth of his son. He used international communications networks to report the March First Movement and Japanese repression, including the killings at Jeam-ri, abroad. The memorable coincidence should not obscure the work behind the story: translation, reporting, evasion of censorship, transmission, and assistance from numerous people.
Mary's writing recorded Seoul vividly, but it also carried the limits of an expatriate viewpoint
Mary, an actor and painter, later described Korean people, landscapes, and family life in her memoir. Her observations are vivid historical material, but they were made from the relatively privileged position of a foreign resident in colonized Korea. A critical reading holds together her evident affection, her eyewitness detail, and assumptions shaped by her era and social position.
After the 1942 expulsion, the house became living space for many other people
During the Pacific War, Japanese authorities detained the Taylors and expelled them to the United States. Through liberation and the Korean War, several generations and households divided and inhabited the house they left behind. Restoration has foregrounded the Taylor family's period, but the later residents who made Dilkusha their home cannot be erased from the building's history.