Koo Vi Kyuin (; January 29, 1888 – November 14, 1985), better known as V. K. Wellington Koo, was a statesman of the Republic of China. He was one of Republic of China's representatives at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Wellington Koo served as an ambassador to France, Great Britain and the United States; was a participant in the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations; and sat as a judge on the International Court of Justice in The Hague from 1957 to 1967. Between October 1926 and June 1927, while serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Koo briefly held the concurrent positions of acting Premier and interim President of the Republic of China. Koo was the first Chinese head of state known to use a Western name publicly. Early life and career (1888–1912) Born in Jiading, now a suburb of Shanghai, in 1888. Koo grew up in an upper-class cosmopolitan family and was fluent in both English and French, which greatly aided his diplomatic career. In 1895, he was greatly affected by China's defeat at the hands of Japan, which led to the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki. Koo later wrote: "Ever since I was seven years old, when I heard with depressed heart the news of China's defeat by Japan, I had desired to work for China's recovery and the removal of the Japanese menace". Koo's father resolved to give him a "modern" education to help him prepare for the coming 20th century and to work for China's modernization. The naval battles during the recent war where the modern British-built warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy had blown out of the water the antiquated junks of the Imperial Chinese Navy had dramatically shown that modern, industrial powers had the advantage over backward nations. In 1897, Germany occupied the Shangdong Province after a short campaign, which again showed to the young Koo that as long as China was backward, it would be bullied by stronger powers. At the age of 11, Koo was sent to be educated at the Anglo-Chinese Junior College in Shanghai, where he was taught in English various subjects such as modern science and geography, though his studies were cut short when he contracted typhoid fever. While at the college, Koo once rode a bicycle down the streets of Shanghai into the International Settlement and followed an English boy also riding a bicycle