A national order that King Gojong awarded to Horace Allen, a U.S. Protestant medical missionary and diplomat at the end of the Joseon Dynasty, is set to become a cultural asset.
 
The Cultural Heritage Administration said Wednesday that it plans to add the Taegeuk Order of Merit awarded to Allen in 1904 to the nation’s cultural assets. 

The medal is currently kept at the Dong-Eun Medical Museum at the Yonsei University College of Medicine. It is one of few intact awards from the Korean Empire era.
 
Allen came to South Korea in 1884 and set up the first modern medical facility in the country.