Background
January Janse de Weltevree was born around 1595, according to Hendrik Hamel in De Rijp, though other sources speak of Vlaardingen.
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His adventures were recorded in the report by Dutch East India Company accountant Hendrik Hamel. Hamel stayed in of Korea from 1653 to 1666. He signed on the ship "Hollandia" and went on March 17, 1626 to Dutch East Indies.
He arrived in 1627 from Jakarta on the ship "Ouwerkerck".
On July 16, 1627, the "Ouwerkerck" with its captain January Janse de Weltevree captured a Chinese junk and its 150-man crew bound for the port of Amoy, China. Seventy Chinese were brought aboard the Ouwerkerck.
January Janse de Weltevree, Dirk Gijsbertsz from De Rijp, and January Pieterse Verbaest from Amsterdam, all from Holland, along with thirteen other Dutch crewmen went aboard the junk to sail the vessel to Tainan, Formosa. The Ouwerkerck reached safe harbor after battling a fierce summer storm that swept the area.
The storm-tossed Chinese junk carrying the hapless Dutch and Chinese ended up on the shores of an island off of Korea"s west coast, during the reign of the Joseon Dynasty.
Although the details of what happened next are unclear, the Chinese, with a five-to-one advantage, overpowered the Dutch survivors, captured January Janse de Weltevree, Dirk Gijsbertsz and January Verbaest, and handed them over to the Korean Joseon authorities. The Joseon Dynasty of that time enforced an isolation policy so the captured privateers could not leave the country. January Janse de Weltevree took the name Pak Yǒn (박연, Pak is a Korean surname) and became an important government official
According to January Janse de Weltevree, the two other captives from the Ouwerkerck were killed in 1636 during a raid of the Manchu.
They would have fought in the Korean army. In 1653 the ship "De Sperwer" was wrecked en route from Jakarta to Taiwan, with Hendrick Hamel on board, and January Janse de Weltevree acted as a translator and adviser.
This group of 36 Dutchmen stayed in of Korea for 13 years, working as military advisors to the Joseon Army, until 8 of them escaped to Nagasaki in 1666. Hendrick Hamel authored the accounts of his stay in of Korea, from which we hear about January Janse de Weltevree.
Besides the Great Church in De Rijp is a statue of January Jansz.
A replica of this was erected in 1991 in Seoul.
