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A New God, A New Education, and
A New Generation of Women:
Three Educational Biographies o f Korean Women
In Kyung Kim Pini
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2002
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UMI Number 3048216
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© 2002
I. KIMPINI
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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ABSTRACT
A NEW GOD, A NEW EDUCATION, AND
A NEW GENERATION OF WOMEN:
THREE EDUCATIONAL BIOGRAPHIES OF KOREAN WOMEN
In Kyung Kim Pini
This dissertation consists of educational biographies of three remarkable
Korean women: Helen Kim (1899-1970), Induk Pahk (1896-1980), and Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998). They lived during a turbulent period (1876-1945) when Korea transformed
from feudal to modem by opening its borders and ultimately enduring colonization and
division. Kim, Pahk, and Lee became leaders in their chosen fields of education, social
work, and law, respectively, by overcoming the inequities faced by women in a maledominated society. They broke stereotypes that had haunted their mothers’ generation,
and paved the way for professional/personal growth for succeeding generations of
Korean women with their hard work, deep Christian faith, and perseverance.
The catalyst leading to women’s educational reforms was the schools founded
by Protestant missionaries. These three women attended Ewha (a school for girls
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founded in 1886), which taught that tradition could be broken, faith in a Christian God
could set women free, and nationalism was of critical importance.
The study defines educational biography as a convergence of education and
biography that informs the educational life history of a subject. Education is a lifelong
pursuit, both planned or unplanned, in which one acquires knowledge, skills, values,
attitudes, and sensibilities in a wide configuration of educative institutions. During this
process, “learning” (cognitive) and “feeling” (emotive/affective) develop in the self,
resulting in an individual culture that is then transmitted to others.
The life of each woman is examined through three major educative phases:
childhood (parental pedagogy), school years (pedagogy of educative institutions), and
vocational/lifelong pedagogy. “Educationally significant others” and “educative style” in
each woman’s life were explored. Their autobiographies as well as interviews with their
colleagues provided illuminating extracts to analyze the education they received, their
accomplishments and lifelong contributions.
Kim, Pahk, and Lee nurtured the mother-daughter relationship as the
foundation of education (parental pedagogy); explored the practice of formal and
informal learning (education); tempered education with human sensitivity based in the
spirit (Christianity); balanced a male-dominated world (female awareness); and reclaimed
what had been lost through inequality and injustice (colonialism, sexism) to a generation
of women.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter
I
n
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................
1
Educational Biography...............................................................................
History of Women’s Education...................................................................
Three Educational Biographies....................................................................
Methodology...............................................................................................
Outline of Chapters....................................................................................
4
18
22
26
38
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND................................................................ 41
The Mothers’ World: Kaekwa Gi (1876-1894)..........................................
Japanese Colonialism (1894-1945).............................................................
Women’s Education and Social Status before Kaehwa (1876-1894).........
Women’s Education and Social Status after Kaehwa.................................
Other Supports that Helped Women’s Cause (Reforms and Newspapers)..
The Importance of Context.........................................................................
A Short History o f Religion in Korea..........................................................
Three Traditional Religions of Korea......................................................
The Arrival of Christianity......................................................................
Medicine and the Missionaries................................................................
Translation of the Bible..........................................................................
Birth of Ewha (1886)..................................................................................
Historical Divisions of Ewha..................................................................
ffl
45
48
50
53
55
57
59
59
62
66
69
69
72
HELEN KIM (1899-1970).......................................................................... 85
Early Childhood Education (1899-1907).................................................... 86
Happy Childhood Memories; Family Dynamics; Mother as Teacher
86
Life-Changing Event: The Conversion to Christianity.......................... 92
Formal Education (1907-1925)................................................................... 99
Turning Point.......................................................................................... 102
Media: Newspapers, Magazines............................................................ 105
Nationalism................................................................................................. 108
Cultural Nationalism............................................................................... 112
Extracurricular Activities and Organizations.......................................... 113
Studies Abroad........................................................................................ 114
Wartime................................................................................................... 119
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Chapter
III
(cont)
IV
Professionalism with Personal Involvement........................................... 123
Woman of Two Cultures............................................................................. 125
INDUK PAHK (1896-1980).......................................................................129
Early Childhood Education (1896-1907).................................................... 129
Early Years..............................................................................................130
Conversion to Christianity......................................................................132
A New Life..............................................................................................135
Family Stories.........................................................................................139
Mother’s Resolve....................................................................................140
Formal Education (1908-1918) at Ewha..................................................... 142
Imprisonment.......................................................................................... 147
Vocational and Lifelong Education (1918-1975)........................................ 149
Marriage..................................................................................................149
Studies Abroad........................................................................................152
Return Home and Divorce in 1930......................................................... 160
Community Service.................................................................................162
Second Trip to the U.S.: Taking Korea to America (1936)................... 165
Returning Home in 1938.........................................................................167
Liberation....................................................................................................168
V
TAI YOUNG LEE (1914-1998)..................................................................174
Early Beginnings and Family Dynamics..................................................... 174
Childhood Experiences: Excellent Speech-Maker................................. 180
Years at Ewha (1932-1936): Many Lessons............................................... 182
Husband: Another Teacher....................................................................188
Vocational and Lifelong Education (1936-1997)........................................ 191
The First Korean Woman Lawyer........................................................... 192
Korean Legal Aid Center for Family Relations in 1956......................... 199
VI
THE EDUCATION OF A GENERATION OF NEW WOMEN................205
Early Childhood Memories........................................................................ 205
Fathers and Mothers as Educators...............................................................210
Storytelling as an Educative Tool................................................................212
The Influence of Christianity...................................................................... 214
Educated Women, New Women of Ewha...................................................218
Mentors/Support Group.............................................................................. 221
ii
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Chapter
VI Female Friendship....................................................................................... 227
(cont) The Woman’s Movement............................................................................ 228
Educative Style........................................................................................... 232
Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D -
Helen Kim (1899-1970)................................................................... 238
Induk Pahk (1896-1980)................................................................... 239
Tai Young Lee (1914-1998)..............................................................240
Timeline for All Three Women.........................................................241
BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................... 250
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LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Photograph
1
Helen Kim ..................................................................................................... 84
2
IndukPahk......................................................................................................128
3
Tai Young Lee............................................................................................... 173
iv
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go to the many people who have helped me on this journey.
Most of all, I wish to thank Professor Hope Jensen Leichter, who has stood by
me at difficult times as well as good times.
I. K. P.
v
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DEDICATION
To my daughters,
May and Melli,
who yearn to know their heritage.
vi
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1
Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
This dissertation tells the “educational life stories” of three remarkable Korean
women: Helen Kim (1899-1970), Induk Pahk (1896-1980), and Tai Young Lee (19141998). They were bom and raised during the most turbulent period in Korean history,
when the country experienced a transformation from a feudal to a modem society. Soon
after what is generally known as the “Kaehwa Period” (1876-1894), Korea opened its
borders to outside powers, beginning with Japan (1876) and subsequently to the West;
responded to the advent of Protestant missionaries (1883); endured Japanese colonial rule
(1905-1945); and accepted the division of the country into South and North Korea at the
end of World War II (1945).
The three women I have chosen to write about were among the first women in
Korea's history to receive a modem, formal education from a school. They became
leaders in their chosen fields of education (Kim), social work (Pahk), and law (Lee), and
their exemplary accomplishments helped to create a new generation of women in Korea.
While not all successful women necessarily become role models for
succeeding generations, the life stories of Kim, Pahk, and Lee reveal how each woman
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2
attained such a status. Each of them overcame the difficulties inherent in being a woman
o f her generation, broke the stereotypes that had hampered their mothers’ generation,
and opened new avenues of professional and personal growth for millions of Korean
women through their bravery and determination during times of national upheaval.
My sisters and I are among the beneficiaries of these three women and other women
o f their generation. Writing this dissertation has been a way for me to honor their
accomplishments and express my gratitude on behalf of all the women o f Korea whose
lives they changed and enriched.
The collective goals of Kim, Pahk, and Lee were: to liberate Korean women
from the ignorance and superstition that had controlled their lives under an archaic social
system; to elevate women’s standard of living spiritually, culturally, and materially; to
raise women’s self-confidence, which had been eroded due to historical and cultural
restraints; and, finally, to become, and to help other women become, contributing
members of society, regardless of their birth, education, occupation or position.
Their efforts were geared toward reforming the existing social and cultural
system to a democratic one, thereby creating a new culture and new opportunities for the
women of Korea. Until Protestant missionaries arrived in Korea in the mid-nineteenth
century and, in 1886, founded Ewha, a mission school for girls, no formal schools for
girls had existed. Although the missionaries’ main purpose was to spread the Christian
faith, Kim, Pahk, and Lee also reaped the benefits of a formal education by attending this
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3
first Christian mission school. There, they learned that in order to help others, they had
to first help themselves by getting the best education they could.
They believed implicitly in Dewey’s pedagogic creed that “education is the
fundamental method of social progress and reform... through education society can
formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape
itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move..
It is not surprising at all that these women of the early 20th century received a modem
education based on Dewey’s philosophy introduced by the American Protestant
missionary teachers, as seen from their stories in the subsequent chapters.
They realized that the attainment of literacy by the women of their generation
would function as the primary means of removing the ignorance and superstition that had
plagued the women of their mothers’ generation. They also believed that raising the
standard of living for women through cultural and spiritual growth could be achieved by
accepting the Christian God, introduced by the Protestant missionaries, and by living
according to the Bible. They yearned to forge their own paths as independent women
who could contribute valuable skills to society, something women had been denied in the
past. They sought to persuade men that women should be allowed to develop their own
abilities, however modest or great those might be, rather than be intimidated into
performing submissive, invisible, and voiceless roles. These goals—though necessary
and urgent—were particularly difficult for any woman of their times to achieve, because
'John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed, 1897.
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4
of Korea’s long-standing discriminatory attitude and behavior toward women. But Kim,
Pahk, and Lee demonstrated their beliefs and accomplished their successes, not through
preaching but by becoming living examples o f their own philosophies. In a society
where education was denied to women and in a culture where Christianity was not
accepted—in fact, where it was the object of disdain, they had to fight as champions of
these two unpopular causes.
Educational Biography
From my perspective as a Korean woman and a beneficiary of their lifelong
work, I found Kim, Pahk, and Lee impressive in their accomplishments; interesting as
women; and intriguing because my own mother did not, like them, adopt a new God and
a new education. Rather, my mother continued to believe in her indigenous religion—a
mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism—and never attended a school. I
wanted to know more about these remarkable women. I wanted some answers to the
following questions: Who was each woman? What was her family background? What
kind of education did she receive? Where did she get that education? How did she go
about getting it? What did she accomplish and how?
I decided that the best way to learn about these women—their lives, their
experiences, their relationships in terms of a broad education—was to research and write
an educational biography of each of them. “Educational biography is a life story that
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5
focuses on the process of education within a life and as part of a life."2 Thus, the
biographer looks for anything and anyone performing an educative function in the
subject’s life. The writer of an educational biography can provide insights into the
subject’s world that cannot be explained simply by enumerating activities and
achievements. Two concepts must converge; the concept of biography that tells an entire
life story, and a well-defined but broad definition of education that is relevant and
meaningful to the subject’s life. A standard biography presents the objective facts,
events, circumstances, experiences, and relationships of its subject’s life, but the
educational biographer must also interpret those facts in a manner that enhances and
clarifies this broad definition of education. In other words, an educational biography
requires a definition of “education” enmeshed with the definition of “biography.”
For this dissertation, I have defined “education” broadly and inclusively,
thereby allowing me to enter the lives of my three women subjects and claim as
educational their varied and compelling life experiences. Education is a lifelong effort,
planned or by chance, to acquire simultaneously from educative experiences and
relationships knowledge and skills on one hand and values, attitudes, and sensibilities on
the other. These attributes can be learned at schools and in other educative institutions
such as families, churches, museums, and work places. The effort is ongoing, pervasive,
2Ellen C. l agem ann, A Generation o f Women: Studies in Educational Biography (New York:
Teachers College, Columbia University, 1978), p. 11. Originally, the concept of educational biography
was suggested by Lawrence A. Cremin; see Lawrence A. Cremin, Public Education (New York: Basic
Books, 1976), pp. 37-44, and Tradition o f American Education (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 145148.
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6
and cumulative throughout one’s life. During this continuous process, “learning”
(cognitive) and “feeling” (emotive/affective) develop in the self, and as a result, an
individual culture is formed. Ideally, this “culture” is transmitted to others, for at its best,
education should constitute both learning and teaching.
Education, if ideally conceived, is “the most perfect and intimate union of
science and art conceivable in human experience,”3 and so is an educational biography.
However, the position of education as an academic discipline has always been isolated or
independent from the Social Sciences, the “Pure” Sciences, and the Humanities. It is,
however, a crucial part of all of these disciplines. Educational research necessarily
concerns itself with many variables: philosophy and theories; ideas and practice; culture
and people, to name a few. However, if such research depends on “scientific”
quantification only (which would perhaps be possible), then a problem arises as to how
the cultural and social significance of education is mediated or explained. Lagemann
characterizes educational research as follows: “Why has this domain of scholarly work
always been regarded as something of a stepchild, reluctantly tolerated at the margins of
academe and rarely trusted by policy makers, practitioners, or members of the public at
large?”4 I think the reasons are manifold. First, education as a field of study has neither
a clearly separate body of subject matter nor a structured methodology for research
purposes. Second, a certain disharmony exists between philosophers and theorists of
3Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed, 1897.
4Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History o f Education
Research (Chicago, 111.: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. x.
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7
education on one hand and its practitioners who undertake the practice of education on
the other. Education, like any other academic discipline, needs foundational theories, but
these may not always be perceived as relevant for its practice. Conversely, theorists have
reservations about an educational practice that seems devoid o f truth-searching and
reflection on the relationship between education and the very people it purports to
educate. As much as a “reflective practitioner” is necessary, so too is a “practical
philosopher.” More than any other field of study, education must fulfill these dual
responsibilities.5
I became convinced to write an educational biography when I came upon
Ellen Lagemann’s (1978) dissertation, A Generation o f Women: Studies in Educational
Biography. Lagemann’s work led me to find parallels between the Progressive
Generation of American women of the early-twentieth century and the New Generation
of Korean women of the same period. Of course, the parallelism should not be
overdrawn. Lagemann’s subjects had, relatively speaking, an easier time in
accomplishing their goals: in early-twentieth century America, an educated woman was
not a freak, and successful professional women, albeit relatively uncommon, were
accepted and sometimes even lauded. In Korea, women were considered second-rate
human beings, although a few women had exercised power dynastically, for example,
Queen Min,6 or some wives/concubines of powerful men. Lagemann’s female
sChristopher Higgins, “From Reflective Practice to Practical Wisdom: Three Models of
Liberal Teacher Education,” in Philosophy o f Education (Urbana, 111.: Philosophy of Education Society,
2002).
6Wife of one of the last Kings of Korea’s Yi dynasty (1392-1926), King Kojong (1864-1907).
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8
Progressive generation had predecessors who had mapped out a course that, with some
difficulty, could be followed. My three Korean exemplars, on the contrary, had to cut
their own way through a forest of antiquated restrictions. In addition, most of the
American women had support from the male members of their families, while the Korean
women had only their uneducated (yet great-hearted) mothers to encourage them in their
aspirations.7
Nevertheless, even though the cultures, the structures of the two societies, and
the women themselves are dissimilar in many ways, I felt that Lagemann’s basic
theoretical framework would work for ethnically different groups of people because of its
universal applicability: educational biography as a genre is the study of an individual’s
lifelong educative processes. It does not limit the configuration of “education” strictly to
learning academic subjects only in school. Rather, educational biography widens the
parameters of educative institutions, simultaneously taking into account the relationships,
experiences, and events that significantly contribute to the creation of an educated
individual in a particular culture or society.
Having defined education as an amalgam of all-inclusive educative
experiences in a life and as something not confined to learning academic subjects at
school only (the sole criterion for education in the past), I felt confident that my interest
in writing an educational biography was fully justified. I also felt gratified that this broad
7These illiterate (except Tai Young’s mother), widowed mothers, bom during “Kae Hwa Gi”
(1876-1894), became the first Christian converts. They gave all they had for their daughters’ education
because they did not want to see them to follow in their footsteps.
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9
definition of education would enable me to justify my desire to tell some of my own
mother’s life stories. Though a formal education and a church affiliation for a “new
woman” were revered in her lifetime by some women, my mother was a traditional, “old”
woman. Never formally educated and never sent to school, she had a basic and
functional literacy with a knowledge of a few Chinese characters learned at home. She
did not convert to Christianity and was neither famous nor accomplished. I must admit
that I still feel a certain amount of envy for my contemporaries who were the children of
“new women” because they were ahead of me—not necessarily academically, but in their
culture and way of thinking. Having said this, however, I am glad for the opportunity to
express pride in my mother’s career as a mother, and to acknowledge that she was the
first and best teacher I ever had.
I also feel angry that throughout its history, Korea denied women any chance
for an education until they were rescued by the Christian missionaries, who brought with
them their foreign culture and religion. Writing the life stories of three women who rose
above their backgrounds and seized new opportunities as they were offered is a way of
dealing intellectually with that anger.
It is relevant to this study to distinguish “education” from “schooling.” First
of all, a predominant and wrong notion is that one must go to school to be educated.
According to Dewey’s broad definition of education, a living being gets “education”
simply by living with others, by having varied experiences, and by interacting in an
environment in which he/she thinks and feels. “Education, in its broadest sense, is the
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10
means of this social continuity of life.”8 This notion is particularly significant for an
educational biography since life itself is an education and that biography is a study of
one’s life.
Second, when one accepts the broad definition o f education as espoused by
Dewey, then it becomes necessary to broaden the parameters of education to include
social institutions other than school. Education can occur in many venues, such as
families, churches, museums, and offices, where a learner can encounter educative
processes and apply the acquired experience to reorganize and reconstruct subsequent
experiences meaningfully for self-development and growth. This assertion does not
diminish the importance of school, nor does it claim superiority, but the function and
purpose of a school is essentially different from other educative institutions.
‘There is, accordingly, a marked difference between the education which
every one gets from living with others.. .and the deliberate educating of the young.”9 The
former is what he calls an incidental education which is natural and important, although it
does not have deliberate motive to educate; in the latter, the school provides learners with
intentional/intended/deliberate education. While schools have structured curricula,
instruction, and teaching of basic skills to help learners to cope with their basic cultural
and social environment, the other educative institutions—political, economic, legal,
religious, family—offer, without intentional motive to educate, opportunities for
8John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy o f Education
(New York: The Free Press), p. 2.
9Ibid., p. 6.
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11
educationally meaningful experiences, interactions, and relationships that enable learners
to form lifelong beliefs, attitudes, and values. Schools plan, aim for, and design a
particular intended outcome, whereas other institutions are usually “educative” by
chance. To focus only on formal schooling as providing education is insufficient,
although it has been the practice for educators and learners in the past. An educational
biography requires looking at more than a subject’s preparation for planned learning and
its outcome. This process is immensely important, but the educational biographer
complements its focus and importance with a broader and deeper study of non-schooling
education.
Cremin further theorizes that the well-planned curricula taught at school do
not necessarily produce intended or desired outcomes. Conversely, what is not planned
or structured can be learned incidentally. Both are significant in that the results of
intended and incidental learning “end up merging in such a way as to become virtually
indistinguishable. Moreover, there are almost always unintended consequences in
education; indeed, they are often more significant than those that are intended.”10
Cremin’s thesis corresponds to Dewey’s idea of “collateral learning”—
learning that is often more important than a lesson in any given academic subject. Dewey
even calls it a “pedagogical fallacy” if an educator believes that students learn only the
subject they are studying at the time. On the contrary, “collateral learning,” “incidental
'“Lawrence Cremin, Public Education (New York: Basic Books, 1976), pp. 43-44.
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12
learning,” and “those processes that are at the margins o f awareness..
1are learned
along the way in forming attitudes, values, and beliefs that stay with learners all their
lives. This, in the long run, counts more than a particular lesson of math or geography.
Cremin posits a wider “configuration o f education”12that includes churches,
museums, community centers, and many other such institutions where related educational
activities often occur. This configuration refers to the patterning of relationships among
educative institutions that tends to develop at a particular time and in a particular place.
These relationships can be political, pedagogical, or personal; they can involve teachers
or students or both; they can be enduring or transitory, family-church or family-school
relationships; all are part of a larger educational configuration. Cremin acknowledges the
necessary “sound historical understanding of these relationships—linkages”13 among the
various institutions people attend and learn from, which demonstrate the powerful and
necessary connections between their formal (school-based) and lifelong informal (otherbased) learning. The relationships between these settings—“a wider configuration”—
offer significant opportunities and outcomes, and the activities in which students
participate at these institutions comprise a significant educative process.
Education cannot be an autonomous process, independent from the culture in
which it is formed and that it purports to serve. Any given culture has a number of
"Hope Jensen Leichter, “Families and Communities as Educators: Some Concepts of
Relationship,” in Hope Jensen Leichter (Ed.), Families and Communities as Educators (New York:
Teachers College Press, 1979), p. 5.
"Cremin, Public Education (New York: Basic Books, 1976), pp. 30-37.
"Cremin, “Family-Community Linkages in American Education: Some Comments on the
Recent Historiography,” Teachers College Record, Vol. 79, No. 4 (May 1978), p. 701.
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13
institutions other than schools that contribute to the process o f education, directly and
indirectly. In the process of the formation of education and its service to a society, an
interaction of ideas, principles, possibilities, and difficulties, on one hand, and relationships
among participating people, on the other, must create “linkages” or “bridges” to connect
with one another. Without these connections, the educative process is meaningless: it does
not exist in a vacuum or in isolation, and these linkages and bridges make significant
contributions to the formation of an ideally “complete” education.
My definition of education is important for this study because an educational
biography should be based on a well-defined educational and biographical study of the
subject, in order to describe what education did occur in his/her life. I have defined
“education” as a lifelong effort, planned or by chance, both to acquire cognitive learning
in the form of knowledge that includes data, analysis, and facts contained in academic
disciplines, and to acquire values, attitudes, sensibilities from emotive/affective learning.
The connection I am making here has an affinity with Cremin’s “linkages” (although
Cremin is referring to the relationships one educative institution has with another), as
well as to what Dewey calls “the category of continuity” or “the experiential
continuum”14—that is, a previous experience adding to the meaning of a subsequent
experience. In short, connection, linkage, and continuity are necessary in the substance
l4John Dewey, Experience and Education, The Kappa Delta Pi Lectures Series (New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, Collier Books, 1938), p. 33.
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14
and content of education that is obtained in educative institutions other than school, and
they provide learners with opportunities for interaction, transaction, and relationship.
The educational biographer, therefore, should be able to discern what
knowledge her subjects acquired, how they formed other attributes such as values and
attitudes, and how these attributes interacted with the acquired knowledge. Acquiring
knowledge is one important part of education, but without the transmission, evocation or
acquisition of “values, attitudes, skills, and sensibilities,”15 education serves only a partial
purpose.
An educational biographer also should be able to discern and define what
educative experience and interaction are. Not all experiences and interactions are
educative. Dewey’s notion of experience is appropriate for a study o f educational
biography: “Continuity of experience is one criterion by which to discriminate between
educative and non-educative experiences.” He further states that “continuity of
experience” itself does not carry much significance in terms of “educativeness” or
educative potential, but “the category of continuity” or “the experiential continuum” is
the criterion by which to distinguish what is and is not educative experience.16
In fact, experience itself has no meaning unless and until we give meaning to
it for subsequent experience—thus, the familiar expression, “learned a lesson.” Every
experience is a moving force that can be educative, but only if it helps to reorganize
l5Cremin, “Family-Community Linkages in American Education: Some Comments on the
Recent Historiography,” in Hope Jensen Leichter (Ed.), Families and Communities as Educators (New
York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1979), p. 137.
l6Dewey, Experience and Education, p. 33.
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and/or restructure the subsequent experience. For example, a spoiled child generally
takes many things for granted, does not make an effort to maximize his/her potential, and
shows neither patience nor perseverance. However, it is possible that through a certain
experience, relationship, or interaction, the child can turn around and begin a process of
becoming “unspoiled.” Thus, this particular experience or interaction worked much like
a catalyst for this child as an educative experience.
For this reason, Lagemann pursues each subject’s life in her educational
biography by focusing on ’‘what came before any given, discrete experience as well as
what came after.” She adds that a biographer “must simultaneously ‘psychologize’ what
can be discovered about each experience—understand its relationship to what is known
of the individual’s cumulative past experience—and ‘socialize’ it—imaginatively project
to what later known outcome it might connect.”17 In other words, a biographer must take
both the general theory of education and the evidence at hand, and discern what was
educative for her subject by analyzing one experience and connecting it to the next, in
order to search for its meaning and relevance in the subject’s life.
My choice to explore the “experiences and relationships” o f my three
biographical subjects is appropriate for an educational biography because I will be able to
examine my subjects in various circumstances and interpret whether discernible
“knowing” and “feeling”—which are both a source and a result of education—have
l7Lagemami, p. 22.
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occurred through a particular educative experience. I would also have the necessary
latitude to investigate and analyze their exemplary lives though an educational lens.
In essence, an education is not capable of autonomous existence nor can it be
measured with a scientific precision—that it is “an elusive science” at best,18 since it
involves complex variables. These facets include Lagemann’s idea of “interaction” that an
individual’s potential, in terms of talents, instincts, and propensities, is activated, shaped, or
channeled enough to produce a change in the self; Cremin’s "transaction” which occurs
between an individual with a particular temperament and life history and one or more
institutions of education.. .,”19 and what I refer to “educative experiences and
relationships,” through which “knowing” and “feeling” develop in the self.
One’s potential—talent, instinct, sensitivity, likes and dislikes, physical
prowess, temperament, no matter how big or small—needs interaction, transaction, and
relationship between ideas, educative institutions, and people (parents, ministers,
mentors, teachers, among others), in order to produce “a change” in the self (Lagemann),
“self-development” (Cremin), and an occurrence of “knowing and feeling” in the self
(mine), all of which amounts to an education. Without a process of interaction,
transaction, and relationship, one’s innate attributes do not become activated and formed
enough to achieve the maximum result desired.
l8Lagemann, An Elusive Science.
I9Cremin, Public Education, pp. 42-43.
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However, the process of education is a complex one that consumes a long
period of time in order to achieve a desired result. Therefore, the subject of a biography
is shortchanged when the educative experiences of only a certain period of her life—e.g.,
her years at school or her time abroad pursuing an advanced degree—are the only focus
of the investigation. Although a particular phase of the subject's life, over other phases,
may have contained more encounters and interactions of ideas and people that helped her
to reach her goals, the education I am seeking in my study of these three women is
continuous, pervasive, and cumulative over their lifetimes. During the course of studying
a life span, a biographer can discover who were the “educationally significant others" and
what relationships and influences they had upon the subject, as well as how they
represented the culture and the time to which they belonged. Ultimately, the interactions
among people are the most significant influence and human experience that are also
potentially educative, as George S. Counts eloquently states in his book.
It must be emphasized, however, that organized and deliberate
education does not reflect a civilization. Nor is it derived
automatically through a process of assembling and analyzing data.
Always at the point where an educational program comes into being
definite choices are made among many possibilities. And these
choices are made, not by the gods or the laws of nature, but by men
and women working both individually and collectively... who are
moved by all of those forces and considerations that move them in
other realms of conduct, by their knowledge and understanding, their
hopes and fears, their purposes and loyalties, their views of the world
and human destiny.20
20George S. Counts, Education and American Civilization (New York: Teachers College
Press, Columbia University, 1952), pp. 33*35.
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My three subjects, Kim, Pahk, and Lee, are the very women who framed their
culture by challenging the values, conditions, and possibilities they faced through
courageous, creative, and constant efforts. The special challenge they faced was adopting
and adapting to a new culture, melding their own and others without extreme
abandonment and blind acceptance, and passing through the transition it initiated. Using
the tools o f the educational biographer will enhance and illuminate the stories of these
women’s inspiring lives.
History of Women’s Education
This dissertation is a history of education and a history of women’s education,
in part reflecting the Korean society of the mid-1880s through the next 100 years.
Although Korean women have always been active in certain areas of religious practice
such as shamanistic rituals21 and domestic observance of “kosa,"22 their views and
practices have rarely been recorded, studied, and reflected in the systematic and articulate
religious history of Korea. To some extent, this paucity of documentation explains
Korean women’s lack of status and the failure to receive the attention they deserved.
I chose to interpret the historical as well as the individual contexts of my
subjects from a female point of view. From a female perspective, I analyzed their
2lOne shamanistic ritual is known as “gut," which is conducted by “mudang" to exorcise evil
spirits so that a family enjoys no illness or loss of money.
2241Kosa" is an annual ritual prepared by the woman of the household, i.e., mother or
grandmother, to appease the gods of the land and the house so that the father’s business runs smoothly and
the son is successful on his school entrance examination. The food used for this ritual is the rice cake, and
after “kosa," the rice cake is circulated among relatives and neighbors.
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confrontation of norms, their adaptation to new circumstances, and their adoption o f a
new religion and a new education. I searched for the meanings of their lives through a
female prism. I argue that using their own stories to illustrate the educative aspect of
their experiences would broaden an understanding of them as women of a particular place
and time. I also argue that an interpretation of their lives and stories may be closer to the
truth as they perceived it if this interpretation is presented by a female biographer who
can more easily enter or “indwell” her subject’s life.
Gerda Lemer poses a few poignant questions on this issue: “Is the past
gender-determined? Is there a different history of men and of women? Another way of
posing these questions is to ask, does gender determine a person’s experience, activities,
and consciousness?”23 She not only points out the absence of a history of women who
have lived, shaped, and influenced human events historically, attributing it to “the
androcentric assumptions of traditional history”; she also, in no uncertain voice, claims
that the study of women’s history is necessary to include in humankind. Moreover, her
answers to the above questions are unequivocally YES because “gender, like class, race,
and ethnicity, is ONE determinant in shaping the individual’s life.”24 In my study, I
attempted to reconstruct a small part of women’s history based on these three women’s
stories, which had been missing in the larger history. Their personal histories would
explain their time, locale, culture, and a generation.
a Gerda Lemer, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1979), pp. xiv-xv.
24Ibid.
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An educational biography, or any biography for that matter, begins with a first
and principal caregiver and a nurturer who is not only responsible for meeting a child's
physical needs, but also for forming “patterns of knowing, doing, and believing.” Cremin
in Public Education explains that “certain attitudes and behaviors and to teach certain
knowledge and values...which leads on one hand to selective accommodations and
patterns of believing, knowing, and doing, and on the other hand to an inevitable impact
on those undertaking the nurturing and teaching.”23 From this educative experience, a
certain characteristic lifestyle emerges in a maturing child, although as he/she grows
older, the influence of the initial nurturer and teacher will be mitigated.
The first teacher is usually the mother. The process of bonding between
mother and child is an educative process in and of itself. The first experience sets the
stage for the next one. In this sense, the mother is definitely one of a subject’s
“educationally significant others.” The educative influences, advice, reactions, style of
nurturing, conversations, and even scolding given by a mother, the first teacher, must be
studied. Subsequent encounters and interpersonal relationships that influence like “an
educator” (kin, peers, ministers, mentors, and, of course, schoolteachers), all of whom
play a significant educative role in an individual’s life, should also be studied.
Educational biography studies and interprets these relationships. Understanding who
influenced the person under study, how such influence was accepted or refused, and
:5Cremin, Public Education, p. 38.
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whether one experience led the subject to intentionally or otherwise encounter various
experiences can shed light on the process o f education throughout one’s life.
It is, of course, easy to ascertain what the person under study accomplished
and how she got there—in other words, to retrieve the obvious and realized “facts” of her
life. Some difficult questions, however, lie in finding out why she took a certain action in
order to achieve her goal, what motivated her to choose one action over the other, what
previous experience led her to the next one, and the relationship between the two. One
can try to find the answers in “metaphors of self.”
Metaphors are something known and of our making, or at least o f our
choosing, that we put to stand for, and so to help us understand,
something unknown and not of our making; they are that by which the
lonely subjective consciousness gives order not only to itself but to as
much of the objective reality as it is capable of formalizing and o f
controlling.26
It is the biographer’s task to recognize, interpret, analyze, piece together, and
even “psychoanalyse” such “metaphors of self’ that appear in autobiographies, diaries,
and narratives because they are reflective, retrospective, and symbolic of the subject’s life
experiences that potentially provide an insight into the next choice and movement. What
“metaphors of self’ did the subject choose? What “metaphors of self’ influenced the
subject to choose a particular road to seek an education? Were these metaphors
modified, realized, or denied by education? These questions require perception and
insight if they are to be answered satisfactorily.
26James Olney, Metaphors o f Self: The Meaning ofAutobiography (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 30.
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In addition to understanding these more general processes, it is important to
account for differences in the individual characteristics of one’s subject. Cremin points
out that individual differences, including their histories, purposes, and temperaments,
should be given attention. Because of the idiosyncratic individual backgrounds, they
interact with approaches and manners o f their own, and, therefore, one may expect
different outcomes.27 Leichter conceptualized these individual propensities as “educative
style,” which she defines as the ways in which an individual engages in, moves through,
and combines the many accumulated experiences over time; as a result, some form of
education is derived.28 Lagemann further notes that “style is a patterned form of
idiosyncratic self-presentation or the characteristic manner in which over time one acts
out one’s tastes and attitudes toward one’s self and the people and objects of one’s world.
Style can indicate what is preferred, or chosen, as one’s own, in a particular situation or
across a number of different situations.”29
The Three Educational Biographies
The three biographies in this study are divided into three major educative
phases, and within each phase, I look for evidence of the following:
• acquiring “knowing” (cognitive) and “feeling” (emotive/affective) as a
lifelong effort (mine)
27Cremin, Public Education, p. 37.
2*Hope Jensen Leichter, “The Concept of Educative Style," Teachers College Record, Vol.
75, 1973, pp. 239-250.
^Lagemann, Ph.D. dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1978, pp. 17-18.
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• changes in the self, as suggested by Lagemann
• growth in attitudes, values, and sensibilities in a wider configuration of
education, as recommended by Cremin
• distinctive characteristics that constitute educative style, as conceptualized
by Leichter
More specifically, I attempt to answer such questions as:
• who was this woman?
• what was her family background?
• what kind of formal/informal education did she receive?
• what was her motivation for getting this education?
• what were her accomplishments?
• how did she perceive herself and how was she perceived by others?
• how did cultural and social contexts influence these women?
• what role did their church and mission school play in their lives, and how
pervasive and persistent was this influence?
• what conclusions can be drawn from their lives for progress in education and
women’s issues?
In order to answer these questions, I have examined the structure and content
of the three women’s autobiographies and biographies. I also used documentary
evidence, such as old newspaper and magazine articles, published throughout their
lifetimes—either those written by them or about them—as well as interviews with people
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who were their colleagues at Ewha. Being an Ewha graduate myself, I also have personal
knowledge about them. Finally, I reviewed documents and manuscripts written by the
first Protestant missionaries to Korea.
The three major educative phases are:
(1) Parental Pedagogy - The importance of early parental pedagogy cannot be
overemphasized in raising a child, and the raising process itself is an educative process.
Therefore, this phase of parental pedagogy—teaching, explaining, nurturing, and
supporting—must be considered when one undertakes an educational biography.
Whether the educator—the mother in the cases of Kim, Pahk, and Lee—was a formally
educated person or not is irrelevant here because “education,” as defined in this study, is
a broad concept that involves relationships, experiences, and events that leave deep and
significant marks and help a subject reorganize/restructure subsequent experiences. The
reactions of Kim, Pahk, and Lee to their mothers’ early teachings had great significance
in their becoming “educated” individuals. Thus, throughout each life study, I trace which
particular experiences influenced each woman and examine her reactions and their
outcomes. All of these questions have been posed in terms of educative processes, styles,
and accomplishments.
(2) School Pedagogy - Following this first phase of education at home under
the mother’s instruction, the second phase of education took place in the setting of
school. For Kim, Pahk, and Lee, this education was undertaken at the Ewha school for
girls. While not a center for deep intellectual stimulation, the school afforded the girls a
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rich opportunity to develop their attitudes and enthusiasm for academic learning, and to
stabilize their emotional and psychological growth. Given that Ewha was also the first
Christian mission school for girls, their spiritual growth was also a crucial consideration.
It is interesting to note how at a young age, all three switched from a value system
embedded in the traditional Korean mixture of indigenous religions to a totally new
system. This transition phase took place at Ewha, where a new God and a new education
took root in each of their lives—as well as in the lives of many Korean women.
(3)
Lifelong Pedagogy - The third period of education is what I term
vocational, career, or lifelong education. Vocation provides opportunities to use diverse
but connected educative experiences from one’s broad background, and it is continuous.
It necessitates organizing ideas, information, and facts to fall into order with one another.
“The question of the relation of vocation to education brings to a focus the various
problems.. .regarding the connection of thought...; of individual conscious development
with associated life; of theoretical culture with practical behavior having definite
results.. .”30 In short, the premise for including this period is that education never ceases
and should continue throughout one’s lifetime by constantly learning and teaching.
Maximizing one’s potential at work, teaching a colleague, and learning or relearning
something new or old from a new perspective are all components of education in this
later phase o f life. Each of my women subjects would have a professional career:
education, social work, and law. They not only absorbed instruction about new people,
30Dewey, Vocational Aspects o f Education, pp. 317-330.
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places, and issues, but they served as teachers in their own right, introducing the rest of
the world to Korea, Korea to the world, and to its major concerns, particularly regarding
women.
Methodology
Back to a story of my childhood. My family was not well-to-do when I was
growing up. My mother always had to budget carefully for the family’s livelihood and
for her five growing children. The country’s economy was such that eggs were rare and
expensive and considered the most nutritious food that could be bought by ordinary
citizens. Since my mother could not afford to give eggs to all five children at one time,
she gave them to the child who happened to be sick; or to the one preparing for an exam,
who lacked sleep and was therefore tired and needed more nutrition; or to the one who
was participating in a school athletic competition. I was a healthy child, the youngest of
the five and therefore not yet going to school, taking exams, or engaging in athletic
activity. I felt left out, discriminated against, and envious of the egg any one o f my
siblings was getting on a given day.
My mother, being an intelligent and sensitive woman, although not formally
schooled, explained to me why she could not give eggs to all of us and added that the
number of eggs did not demonstrate her love for her children. She further explained that
quantity did not matter; on the surface it did, she added, but the quality o f her love for me
could not be quantified, counted, and measured like the number of eggs. She explained
that the quality of love meant her feelings for me, the rationale for her actions, and her
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solution to a problem according to each child’s need. It did not mean any more or less
love for all of her five children. Since my mother who was explaining this to me, I
believed it, and even as a young child, I became interested in the quality of a person’s
feelings.
The qualitative approach to biographical research is meant to capture, in
essence, the “quality of life” of the subject. The most effective changes that occurred in
the subject’s life are not measurable in facts and figures alone; rather, their record is best
demonstrated in a “quality o f life” that shows initiation, process, endurance, evolution,
transition, and transformation. Thus, the “stories” of a subject in a qualitative study show
history in action, with all its emotional nuances and ramifications over time. The stories
the subjects tell us connect their time to our time. From stories they told, we learn how
they perceived their reality, although we are equipped with the facts of history of their
time. The stories inform us about the contexts in which they lived and their perceptions
of events; they do not merely enumerate events.
While seemingly subjective because o f its emotional content, a qualitative
research study can in fact be highly objective, viewing the subject’s process and
evolution from many angles and opening up possibilities for consideration and
educational implication without judgments and stem conclusions. In this fashion, the
lives of Kim, Pahk, and Lee can be found to contain documented examples that can be
assembled in a narrative flow and within a historical context, to shed light on their past
impact and their ongoing influence.
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In recent years, a growing number of scholars in the field o f education have
advocated listening to stories, narratives, and autobiographies for research purposes.
Jerome Bruner states in “Life as Narrative” that “logical thought is not the only or even
the most ubiquitous mode of thought.... I have been looking at another kind of thought,
one that is quite different in form from reasoning: the form of thought that goes into the
constructing not of logical or inductive arguments, but of stories or narratives. What I
want to do now is to extend these ideas about narrative to the analysis o f the stories we
tell about our lives: “autobiographies.” 31
Until the mid-1970s, the use of “stories” for research did not receive much
legitimacy nor respect because it was assumed that “stories” were just stories; oral
expression was less credible or authoritative than a literate and written one, and hence did
not carry weight as a scientific legitimacy. David R. Olson states that “.. .written
language versus oral language; their usual usages—conversation, story-telling, verse, and
song for the oral mode versus statements, arguments, and essays for the written mode;
their summarizing forms—proverbs and aphorisms for the oral mode versus premises for
the written mode; and finally, the cultural traditions built around these modes—an oral
tradition versus a literate tradition.”32 He argues that there is a transition from the oral
3lJerome Bruner, “Life as Narrative,” in Anne Dyson and Celia Genishi (Eds.), The Needfor
Story: Cultural Diversity in Classroom and Community (Urbana, 111.: National Council of Teachers of
English, 1994), p. 28.
32David R. Olsen, “From Utterance to Text: The Bias of Language in Speech and Writing,”
Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (August 1977), pp. 257-281.
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mode to that of the written that is able to stand with increasing explicitness and is able to
convey “autonomous representation of meaning.”
Because of this emphasis on the superiority of written language versus the oral
mode—an emphasis that encourages essays and arguments esteemed to be better
equipped for telling the facts and “truth”—the field of education, traditionally not
demarcated as a strictly scholarly discipline, tried hard to seek “professionalization”33 by
over-emphasizing and relying on “quantitative,” “scientific,” and “written” sources for
research purposes. Thus, an educational researcher has traditionally adhered to a
quantitative, experimental, and provable paradigm that bases its research on theorydriven, hypothesis-testing, and generalization-producing mode, which Alan Peshkin calls
“the blessed trinity.”34 This method is one of many and still serves a purpose, but the
fundamental concept, that a researcher decides what is important to study and how that
importance can best be portrayed and enunciated in the research, is the main rationale to
choose a methodology other than quantitative for an educational biography. Therefore, a
qualitative researcher should specifically and purposefully choose to frame the research
in accordance with his/her view of the subject and the methodology employed.
33Susan Florio-Ruane, “Conversation and Narrative in Collaborative Research: An
Ethnography of the Written Literacy Forum,” in Carol Witherell and Nel Noddings (Eds.), Stories Lives
Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991), pp. 242-243.
34Alan Peshkin, “The Goodness of Qualitative Research,” Educational Researcher, Vol. 22,
No. 2, pp. 24-30.
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The oft-quoted “rich, thick description” that Geertz espoused for extensive
description of context, events over time, and peoples’ perceptions of those,35 as well as
Margaret Mead’s descriptive stories, suggest that the field of anthropology has used the
naturalistic and interpretive approach for research. This approach often facilitates
insights into the events, circumstances, and—most important—the people under study
more than do numbers, graphs, and samplings as used in an experimental approach. In
the education field, for example, the following research is divorced from the traditional
quantitative mode: Hany Wolcott’s “The Man in the Principal’s Office: An
Ethnography” (1973), in which he tells “rich, thick” stories of a principal’s one-day life,
and Alan Peshkin’s “God’s Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian
School” (1986). Some other studies represent earlier educational research using stories,
narratives, and autobiographies, commonly labeled as “qualitative mode,” that opened the
possibility of employing stories that connect to individuals and situations under study for
research purposes.
Good stories are what Marleen Pugach calls “disciplined” stories.36 By that
she means using and interpreting multiple data sources such as interviews, participant
observations, and document analysis (including autobiographies, diaries, and letters),
over a long, attentive period of time and producing good and credible stories. Pugach
asserts that research based on “stories” is particularly effective and trustworthy for groups
3SCIifford Geertz, The Interpretation o f Culture: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books,
1973).
36Marleen C. Pugach, “The Stories We Choose to Tell: Fulfilling the Promise of Qualitative
Research for Special Education,” Exceptional Children, Vol. 67, No. 4 (2001), pp. 439-453.
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o f people who have been oppressed, marginalized, and ignored because of race, class,
gender, and disability since their “voices” would not otherwise be heard. Each
individual’s feelings, sufferings, and plights are more likely lost in a study filled with
numbers and graphs. Instead, well-told stories “readily connect us to individuals whose
life situations represent ethical or moral or political struggles about which we are
enjoined to take a stand.”37
Similarly, the interaction between the researcher and the researched in sharing
stories brings out equal credence, legitimacy, and power, unlike a one-sided, researchercentered methodology. To say that a particular paradigm for research is more applicable
to a certain type of research does not suggest discarding the other paradigm. Rather, the
important criterion in choosing one paradigm over another has everything to do with the
framework, relevance, legitimacy, and connectivity to the individual, event, and situation
under study. In other words, a particular paradigm and an object of a particular research
should fit in order to produce relevancy, credence, legitimacy, and power.
The reason I became interested in storytelling as a medium for my research is
manifold. A personal story, first. I grew up in a society where television did not exist.
In 1961, a lottery for a television was held in the community center in our neighborhood,
and my family was lucky. Until then, the family had relied on a small radio for news and
my father had a monopoly on that.
37Ibid., p. 439. See also William G. Tierney.
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My early childhood years were exclusively spent with my mother, and very
often her sisters and female neighbors. I would listen to stories on various topics told by
those adult women while my older siblings were out playing with their school friends.
While listening, I learned to choose what I liked to listen to, discard what I did not care
about, and think about them later in bed. From their stories I learned many things—from
how to make a certain dish cheaply but deliciously, to why and how to fight with their
husbands. But most of all, I felt how sensitive and smart my mother was when she
answered questions or gave advice to her sisters. I also learned how much she had
wanted to go to school with her brothers, but could not because she was a woman and the
oldest daughter burdened with domestic responsibilities. From storytelling and listening,
I gained this insight into my mother’s innermost feelings about important issues she
faced. As I grew older and started school myself, I was complimented by my teachers for
telling good stories and sought after by my peers for more stories. I probably learned this
skill from my mother.
Second, when I began my research, the paucity of material on women’s
education for the period during which my three subjects lived and worked was
astounding. It was relatively easy to find encyclopedic information about notable and
accomplished women leaders like Kim, Pahk, and Lee. The history of women’s
education, however, was not recorded because woman had no formal education. This
seems as if formal education was the only education regarded worthy of record. To
reconstruct that part of history, I had to rely on documentary evidence such as
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autobiographies, diaries, letters, and newspaper articles written by the women I wished to
study. These writings are not stories per se—face-to-face telling and listening—but they
tell us their stories in a written form that nonetheless serves the purpose of a study of
historical individuals.
Third, stories we tell and stories we hear connect us to each other and to our
histories in time and space. Stories help us in the formation of self and others. Stories
play a role in transmitting culture to succeeding generations. They tell us our culture,
beliefs, and history that we may not know otherwise. Stories have images, symbols, and
metaphors that help us to know, understand, and feel the person telling the story. Stories
remind us of memories that might otherwise have been forgotten. The young Kim, Pahk,
and Lee heard stories from their mothers and left their stories as their legacy. Stories
make bridges and linkages: “[stories] matter a lot and when we examine stories about
learning, the stories themselves are learning. Moreover, stories have an afterlife, and we
need to give more attention to this afterlife.”38
In the field of medicine and law, first-hand stories take prominent importance
in treating and solving the case. Robert Coles, a psychiatrist by profession, states that his
source for insights and treatments for a patient relies on stories. He claims that he is able
to enter another person’s life by sharing stories. The power o f the story, he feels, is that
“the wonderful mimetic power a novel or story can have—its capacity to work its way
3RHope Jensen Leichter, “Stories Are Learning,” Presentation at the Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art, Cornell University Symposium on “Learning in Museums,” October 1998.
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into one's thinking life, yes, but also one’s reveries or idle thoughts, even one’s moods
and dreams.”39 In education, where theorists and practitioners collaborate, practitioners’
(teachers’) stories are an integral part of teaching and learning because these individuals
are in classrooms telling and listening to stories.
Storytelling is particularly effective for “persons, long inarticulate, [who] are
overcoming the silences by thinking and speaking in terms of story. Many of the sources
lie in women’s experiences of such overcoming.”40 Pugach asserts that we will hear
increasingly more “.. .the voices of individuals of color, those in lower socioeconomic
classes, or those of women—speaking for themselves—rising to the forefront of
qualitative research, enabling us to hear stories that until recently have been suppressed in
mainstream educational research” as a reaction to the tradition of one-sided, researchercentered research. This is what Denzin and Lincoln call a “crisis of representation,”41
representing only the researcher’s knowledge and interpretation rather than that of the
actual individual researched. Incorporating the stories told by the subject into the
research can produce a two-sided and equitable account, thus representing the true
character of human meanings in words and deeds instead of the dispassionate, detached,
and distant description and analysis of the researcher.
39Robert Coles, The Call o f Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1989), p. 204.
40Maxine Greene, “Forward” Stories Lives Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education, 1991,
p. ix.
4IN. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln, Handbook o f Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif.:
Sage Publications, 1994), p. 9.
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Having validated the importance of stories for an educational biography, I
used written stories from the writings of the three women subjects. Researchers have
defined a life history in a variety o f ways, and that particular definition should serve the
intended purpose the researcher has set out to fulfill. A life history is composed of an
individual’s experiences over time. A life history can be learned from his/her own
writings such as an autobiography, letters, diaries, newspaper articles or magazines as
well as scholarly articles and dissertations. It can also be learned from works about the
individual written by others, including family members, friends, and colleagues who have
known and had relationships with the subject (their names can be found in the
Bibliography). In particular, the autobiographies of these three women reveal insightful
stories—not oral stories, admittedly, but written stories nevertheless—that help to fill the
void that existed in their lives and, therefore, in women’s history in the Korea of their
time. The stories examined in this study came from three women subjects themselves;
therefore, their validity and reliability should be taken at face value as if they were
narrating the stories personally. The analysis and interpretation of the stories have been
conducted in accord with the historical and cultural contexts in which they lived, as well
as my personal knowledge of the contexts I have inherited.
This study is not a historical study of the women themselves. I tried to extract
from each woman’s life what her education was and how she obtained it; what her
definition of education was; how she represented her time in terms o f method of
education and accomplishments; what her educative style was; and who the important
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36
persons in her education were. Through autobiography, we can learn about a person's
manners and styles as he/she moved through life. Even when the person is writing about
events and people, we can know his/her sense of subjective self in relation to others—the
objective world. Autobiography expresses and reflects its creator with metaphors that
connect him/her to outside objects, and does so at every stage of life. Through
metaphors, then, we learn who each person really is.42 Autobiography is not just
“recorded gossip” nor a reading of dates, names or places, but a characteristic attempt to
perceive, organize, and understand an individual’s way of feeling and expression.
Through metaphors, we see the order and meaning of a subject’s life. Therefore, use o f
autobiography is justified in studies as long as the researcher critically examines sources,
selects particulars from authentic materials, and synthesizes these particulars into a
narrative that will withstand the test of critical methods.
In order to arrive at an accurate interpretation from stories, a researcher needs
sensitivity, imagination, and empathy to participate in the experiences of others that are
filled with facts as well as unquantifiable feelings and reactions. For this reason,
biography as a genre should be a combination of quantitative and qualitative endeavor in
its exactness of the facts; it should be an art to make it alive with “feelings and
appreciations,” all of which culminate to an “aesthetic” activity 43
4201ney, Metaphors o f Self.
43John H. Chambers, Empiricist Research on Teaching: A Philosophical and Practical
Critique o f Its Scientific Pretensions (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 24-30.
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This research method is problematic because the stories are not universally
applicable and, therefore, lack generalizability. But the outcome of such research, then,
can be exemplification, not categorization. Moreover, Peshkin asserts that “The
assumption behind the story of any particular life is that there’s something worth
learning.”44 Greene also states that the result many not be “comforting assurances of cool
and shining certainties,” but in the domain of possibilities “we will be engaged, and we
will be in search.”45 Wolfe summarizes this point well:
One hopes that one’s case will touch others. But how to connect? Not
by calculation, I think, not by the assumption that...I have discovered a
‘universal condition of consciousness.’ One may merely know that no
one is alone and hope that a singular story, as every true story is
singular, will in the magic way of some things apply, connect,
resonate, touch a magic chord.46
Indeed, I hope to connect these “three stories” in some “magic” way for others
who are reading and learning about these women for the first time. Although the poetic
wish “to connect” lacks certainty and a broader use, the assumption here is that every life
story has something worthwhile to learn. There is also another, more vital outcome: as
Leichter says, “when we examine stories about learning, the stories themselves are
learning.”47
44Alan Peshkin, “The Goodness of Qualitative Research,” Educational Researcher, Vol. 22,
No. 2 (1993), pp. 24-30.
Carol Withered and Nel Noddings (Eds.), Stories Lives Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in
Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991), p. x.
^Geoffrey Wolfe, “Minor Lives,” in M. Pachter (Ed.), Telling Lives: The Biographer's Art
(1985), p. 72.
47Leichter, “Stories Are Learning.”
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Outline of Chapters
Chapter I presents a brief introduction to the educational biographies of three
Korean women whose lives reshaped a culture. In this chapter, other forms of education,
in addition to the traditional, are examined as a frame for discussing the biographies. In
addition, the concept of educational biography is addressed, particularly in relation to its
function as a teaching and learning tool. Qualitative methodology using “stories” is
discussed and its relevance and appropriateness for an educational biography are asserted.
Section one of Chapter Q presents a brief historical overview of the earlytwentieth century, when these three subjects were bom. I question what kind of formal
and informal education was available to these women in their youth, and why and how
such education was relevant to them within the political, social, historical, and cultural
climate of the time.
Section two of Chapter II discusses the history of religion in Korea, and
Section three discusses the birth of the Ewha School as a founding pillar of modem
education for women. In addition, other educationally relevant institutions that affected
the lives of my three subjects are considered.
Chapters m, IV, and V present the three biographies. Each biography is
divided into sections addressing parental pedagogy, formal education, and the lifelong
or vocational educative processes of the three women. In addition, the significant
experiences and events that influenced the subjects’ educative processes are discussed.
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This analysis considers the ways in which these women related their educational
accomplishments to their lives as well as the lives of others.
Finally, Chapter VI presents a portrait of the generation exemplified by Helen
Kim, Induk Pahk, and Tai Young Lee—a generation whose reputation has endured for
more than a hundred years and still retains the respect and prestige denoted by its name,
“A Generation of New Women.” This generation represented women who wanted
change in their lives, but did not know how to achieve it because the system appeared to
be stronger than they were. Yet if these three women were the standard, then many
women were also triggered by the sad stories of their female ancestors and were
compelled to devote their own lives to compensate and undo the pain that had been
inflicted on their closest relatives. As a generation, Kim, Pahk, and Lee left a legacy that
nurtured the mother-daughter relationship as the foundation of education (parental
pedagogy); that explored what true learning was and how to put it into practice
(education); that tempered such practice with human sensitivity based in the spirit
(Christianity); that shifted an unbalanced and inequitable male-dominated world (female
awareness); and that attempted to reclaim in life all that could be lost through inequality
and injustice (colonialism, sexism).
While these three women of the New Generation are unique individuals, their
lives mirrored those of their fellow women because they occurred under the same social
and cultural structures and contexts. Therefore, one can assume that the issues that were
important to Kim, Pahk, and Lee also mattered to the other women of the same
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generation. Of course, it is not possible or appropriate to generalize a whole generation
from three individual stories. Neither is my intention here, but we can, I believe, claim
the stories of these three women as exemplary.
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Chapter II
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
This is a story/history of three women’s lives who exemplified the
transformation of a society. They did not spring up fully formed; they became important
and effective personalities against, and because of, a background of profound historical
changes in Korean culture. Everyone lives in an historical context: geographical and
temporal constraints and opportunities determine to a great extent who and what we
become.
I have chosen the years 1875-1945 as the key background period for this
study, even though the biographies I provide of Kim, Pahk, and Lee extend into the 1970s
to take into account the many professional activities they pursued before their deaths.
These years were a critical and turbulent period in Korean history because of tectonic
upheavals in the country’s political, economic, social, and cultural structures.
During this period, Korea essentially shifted from a traditional society, frozen
in form for centuries, to a Westernized and modem country. Up till then, Korea had been
isolated from the currents of change that swept its neighbors in the nineteenth century.
For example, China had already engaged in extensive commerce with the West after the
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Opium War (1839-1842)48 with Britain and the Arrow War (1856-1860)49 with Britain
and France by signing the Treaties of Tientsin in 18S8; in the mid-nineteenth century, the
Perry expedition50 to Japan had exposed that country to Western military power, which
the Japanese emulated and eventually equaled. Subsequently, during the Meiji period
(1867-1912),51 Japan transformed itself into a modem society. Such violent currents,
however, scarcely disturbed a placid and backward Korea, which was off the main trade
routes. Western European traders could only reach Korea by either going overland
through China or past Japan and China by sea. By comparison with its neighbors, Korea
was small, poor, and primitive and offered few lucrative trading opportunities. But in the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, the ice began to break, mainly because of two
factors:
48A trading war in the mid-nineteenth century in which Britain and China fought At the
beginning of the century, British traders began illegally importing opium into China. The Chinese
government tried to stop and confiscate the opium. The antagonism increased between the two sides and
some drunken British sailors killed a Chinese villager. The British government not trusting the Chinese
legal system, refused to turn the accused men over to the Chinese authorities. {The New Encyclopaedia
Britannica Ready Reference, Vol. 8, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997, pp. 967-968)
49The second war between Britain and France against China. In 1856, the British, seeking to
extend their trading rights in China, found an excuse to renew hostilities when some Chinese officials
boarded the ship Arrow and lowered the British flag. The French joined the British in the war, using as
their excuse the murder of a French missionary in the interior of China. After these two incidents, China
was forced to sign the Treaties of Tientsin (1858) that allowed Western trade and foreign Christian
missionaries into China. {The New Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference, Vol. 8, Chicago:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997, pp. 967-968)
50After more than two centuries of isolation, Japan was forced to open its borders for trade
and commerce when the American naval officer, Matthew C. Perry, headed an expedition in 1853-54.
Because of his effort, America became an equal power with Britain, France, and Russia in the economic
expansion of East Asia. The Perry expedition contributed to the collapse of the traditional Japanese
isolationist policy and the beginning of the modernization effort {The New Encyclopaedia Britannica
Ready Reference, Vol. 8, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997, p. 306)
slThe Japanese emperor Meiji (1867-1912) transformed Japan from a feudal country into a
modem one by supporting the growing popular consensus on the need to modernize Japan along Western
lines after a 250-year period of cultural and economic isolation. The colonization of Korea was a part of
Meiji’s modernization program.
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43
the growing influence of Japan and the advent of Protestant missionaries in the mid1880s. Japan was a generation ahead of Korea in its exposure to Western influences but,
more important, the Japanese governing class welcomed Western science and industry
instead o f resisting it. They also heartily adopted the concept and practices of
colonialism, that somewhat less attractive manifestation of European civilization. Thus,
the Meiji government (1867-1912) set its sights west across the Sea of Japan past China
(they would look more closely at that country in a few decades) and over the Korea
Strait. The Japanese economic and cultural penetration o f Korea began in 1876 with the
Treaty of Kangwha, which granted Japan special extraterritorial and trading rights, and
culminated in 1910 with Japan’s outright annexation of Korea.
The second great modernizing influence on Korea was the arrival of the
Protestant missionaries. At first, Christian doctrine and the missionaries who professed it
were hardly a transforming social force at the forefront o f cultural change. But gradually
Christianity became like a gentle breeze that blew into a great wind sweeping away the
cobwebs of centuries. By teaching that each person stood in an individual relationship
with God and was responsible for her/his own future and fate, the Christian missionaries
tried to break the Confucian mold of fatalistic resignation that had typified the Korean
ethos throughout history. Nowhere did Christianity have a greater effect than in the
status of women.
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The Confucian social structure that Korea had imported from China52 in as
early as 875 was entirely male-oriented. Women lacked status outside the domestic
sphere and counted for little in the greater society. They were seldom given their own
names and their identity was tied to their male relatives. A girl was first known as X’s
daughter; she then became Y's wife; and finally she was her son Z’s mother. In a society
where education was a respected agent for self-improvement, girls received no schooling
and were not expected to learn to read. Women were restricted by rules laid down for
them in the book Nae Hun,53 which asserts as one of its seven edifications: “She should
not indulge in studying or reading literature because this is considered improper for a
woman.” Although Nae Hun was written in 1475, it froze cultural norms and standards
for females in the mentality of both Korean men and women for more than five hundred
years. This feudal mentality was in large measure responsible for shackling women in
the bondage of intellectual ignorance.
The catalytic agent that led to reforms for women’s education was the influx
of Protestant missionaries and the schools they founded. Protestant missionaries and
schools such as Ewha (founded in i886),54 inculcated in my three subjects for this study,
S2Confucianism was introduced to Korea from China in 875. It became the state religion
when the Yi dynasty came into power in 1392.
53Nae Hun was the first Korean book of instruction for women written by Queen Sohei in
1475. Nae Hun in Chinese means “instruction for interior, internal, inside.” Women inhabit the interior,
while men live externally. Hence, the title of the book would translate as “Instruction for Internally Living
People,” i.e., women.
S4Ewha is the first girls’ school founded by American Methodist missionary, Mary Scranton,
in 1886. Kim, Pahk, and Lee and the succeeding generations of women, including my two sisters and
myself, attended.
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and in all their female students, the realization that the traditional strictures on a woman’s
life could be broken and that their futures were open before them. They were taught that
faith in a Christian God, prayer, hard work, and determination would make them free.
The girls were sometimes skeptical about the missionaries’ teachings and it was not
always easy for them to meld this new Western culture and religion with the beliefs of
their early lives. But as they grew older, they learned to bypass or shatter the network of
proscriptions imposed on women by Korean history and Korean culture. Kim, Pahk, and
Lee were successful as individuals: they broke the chains of centuries, and thousands
have passed through the pathways they opened.
In Women Living Change, Bourque and Divine state that “[human] lives are
informed by history, which is inherited; but that history is mitigated in particular ways by
the relative positions and subjective judgments of individuals.”55 To understand Kim,
Pahk, and Lee in historical context, we need to know the history they inherited from their
parents and how their lives mitigated that history.
The Mothers’ World: Kaehwa Gi (1876-18941
The years 1876-1894 are known as Korea’s Kaehwa Gi (literally translated as
“Period of Enlightenment”). The word Kaehwa in Chinese characters56 means “open to
change,” “open to culture,” “open to improvement with reform.” It is important to start
5fSusan Bourque and Donna Divine (Eds.), Women Living Change (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1985), p. 4.
56Due to China’s enormous cultural influence, the majority of Korean academic vocabularies
are in Chinese, as vocabularies in Western academe were in Latin.
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the historical narrative here because Kaehwa brought about large changes during a time
in which the mothers of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young lived.
Korea’s difficulties as a nation stemmed in part from its geographical location.
For centuries, dominant neighboring powers—China, Japan, and Russia—had imposed
their political and cultural norms upon the Korean people. The Yi dynasty (1392-1926),
which ruled the country for more than five hundred years, was plagued by inefficiency,
corruption, nepotism, and a rigid adherence to Confucianism, an ideology borrowed from
China. Its final fifty years were particularly tumultuous because of ineffective leaders
and the consequences of new contacts with the West. The Kaehwa period had begun, and
the old ways were being challenged by new ideas; friction arose between the conservative
faction of the government known as “bosu pa ” (tradition-minded), who wished to keep
the status quo, and the liberal faction of men known as “kaehwa pa ” (reform-minded),
who had gone overseas for study. Fiercely at odds, these two factions were responsible
for several failed political movements and coups d’etats.
Meanwhile, one of the last kings of Yi dynasty, King Kojong (1864-1907),
was enthroned in 1864 at the age of twelve. However, his ambitious father, generally
known as "Taewon gun " essentially controlled the Palace as de facto regent from 1864 to
1873. The Taewon gun was a staunchly conservative ruler supported by the conservative
faction bosu pa, who feared reforms, and opposed by the liberal faction kaehwa pa, who
advocated general reforms on all fronts and urged him to open the borders of Korea to
foreign trade. The conservative faction saw this as a “foreign invasion,” one that would
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threaten their prestige, power, and relatively comfortable lifestyle. For the lower classes,
however, and particularly for lower-class women, the advent of foreign ideas turned out
to be a liberating force in their lives because they had nothing much to lose under the
existing social system.
The Taewon gun tried to appease both sides and gained some respect and
popularity for his efforts, but he was caught between conservative Confiician officials
and the emerging powerful Min family, one of whose members married the young King
Kojong. Queen Min had complete control over her young husband and succeeded in
eliminating the Taewon gun in 1873. Although the liberal faction continued to fight for
reform, at this point they were still proposing nothing that would benefit women.
In 1876, the young King Kojong, inexperienced in how to rule after his father
lost all power, signed the Treaty of Friendship (also known as the Treaty of Kangwha, the
name o f the city where the signing took place) with Japan. Signed from weakness and
ignorance, the treaty was not advantageous for Korea. It gave Japan special commercial
and legal advantages such as an extraterritorial privilege authorizing the establishment of
Japanese settlements on land to be leased, and protecting Japanese from criminal
prosecution by the Korean law. Subsequently, Korea established formal relations with
several Western nations: the United States in 1882, Britain and Germany in 1883, Italy
and Russia in 1884, France in 1886, and Austria-Hungary in 1889.
Thus, Korea entered the world stage believing that trade and commerce were
the foremost reasons to open its borders but unable to anticipate the inevitable cultural
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influence that would accompany such an opening. For example, again out of
inexperience, Korea allowed the 1886 treaty with France to contain an ambiguously
phrased clause that was interpreted as permitting the propagation of Christianity in
Korea. At this point in its history, Korea was not quite ready to handle the imminent
reforms of its social infrastructure that were necessary to accommodate the foreign
cultures that were being introduced as a result of these treaties with the West.
Nevertheless, the long-isolated country was stirring with new waves of change.
The Japanese Colonialism (1894-19451
Kim, Pahk, and Lee were bom and raised during the period of Japan’s
colonization of Korea. Japan had emerged as a major world power after defeating China
in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). After this war, Japan, which was beginning to
acquire Western technology, became interested in Korea’s abundant natural resources of
coal and iron. At this time, China and Japan were competing for Korea and, as a
consequence, the Korean people were fearful, resentful, and baffled. For example, when
the Tonghak rebellion (1894)57 broke out in Korea, the Chinese government sent troops to
disperse the rebels but the Japanese troops were better equipped, modernized, and
57Tonghak (Eastern Learning) rebellion was the most significant non-Christian, politicoreligious movement initiated by Choe Che U (1824-1864). As an indigenous and nationalistic philosophy,
it opposed Sohak (Western Learning) that included Catholicism; it advocated a universal God and equality
of people, regardless of their social class or gender. The Tonghak followers wanted to overturn the ruling
class that was corrupt and unjust The intention was worthwhile, but it did not succeed as a movement.
(Kim Yong Jung (Ed. and Trans.), Women o f Korea: A History from Ancient Times to 1945, Seoul, Korea:
Ewha Woman’s University Press, 1976, pp. 243-245)
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49
organized than the Chinese and won the war. At this juncture, China conceded its
centuries-long protective relationship with Korea, thereby giving the victorious Japanese
the power and the motivation to dominate their new “colony.” Subsequently, Japan
forced Russia to abandon its expansionist policy in the Far East, by expelling its armies
from Korea and Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05) and by defeating the
Russian navy. Japan finally annexed Korea in 1910 and began a harsh colonial rule.
The occupying Japanese administration forced Korean nationals to change
their names into Japanese58 and to leam Japanese instead of Korean; school children were
forced to worship the Japanese emperor. Kim, Pahk, and Lee, who had inherited the
extremely unfair history of women that was the result of Confucian culture, were now
faced with an equally unfair alien domination. Most threatening o f all to their new
freedom as young women was the Japanese condemnation of Christian schools, including
their own school, Ewha. The women of their generation, who had not been given names
at birth because of the low status of women, were now being forced to change their hardwon Korean names to Japanese. Their mothers still had to work hard to prepare food and
the ceremony for ancestor worship (from their husbands’ lineage) but were not allowed to
participate in the ritual, and the young women now officially had to worship the Japanese
emperor.
58My mother complained that her changed name in Japanese was Hiroko and another family
member’s name was Hidoko. To her, those names were confusing, Japanese, and not the names given by
their own parents. It did not make sense.
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Women’s Education and Social Status before Kaehwa (1876-1894)
Before Kaehwa no formal education for women existed in Korea. Only boys
went to school: Confucian teaching placed a high value on male education, and
academic success guaranteed entry into the elite class. Girls, on the other hand, were
educated mainly at home under rigid standards dictated by Confucian norms that classed
women as second-rate citizens.39 A successful family education for a girl meant that she
would grow up to be a well-bred girl who was unconditionally obedient to her parents,
had harmonious relationships with her siblings, and was quiet and docile in personality,
good at domestic matters, and, of course, chaste. To marry well was the most important
yardstick of female success. For example, when a girl was matched to a prospective
groom by a matchmaker, the first important question asked about the bride-to-be was,
“Has she received a good family education?” A good family education meant that the
demands forced upon girls had been strictly carried out. Before Kaehwa women had no
choices and no options.
Education for Kim, Pahk, and Lee did not mean that they traded traditional
cultural traits that were considered “virtues” for new, Western ideals; rather, they
struggled to maintain a balance between honoring their own traditional culture and
adopting a new Christian culture. This new culture valued education for women and was
59The Confucian ideology of women is “namjon ydbi ” The literal translation is “Respect
Male and Treat Women as Inferior.”
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an embodiment of equality and fairness, as well as the democratic ideals and practices
they perceived and desired.
The first Korean book of instruction for women in han 'gul,60 titled Naehun,
illustrates how hard it is to totally eliminate cultural traits that have been esteemed and
practiced for centuries. Its values are still regarded relevant, with the exception of one
stricture against woman studying and reading literature. Naehun was written in 1475 by
Queen Sohei, mother o f King Songjong, who was concerned about the lack of education
for girls of all classes. The book has seven chapters, each concerned with teaching
women their place in society:
1. A woman should behave and think in a gentle and modest manner.
2. In marriage she should be obedient and polite to her parents-in-law.
3. She should maintain peaceful and harmonious relationships with her
husband’s siblings.
4. She should be diligent and zealous in performing religious rites and
entertaining guests, who are essentially her husband’s guests.
5. In rearing and educating children, she should be both firm and gentle.
6. She should be diligent and frugal in managing her household.
7. She should not indulge in studying or reading literature because this is
considered improper for a woman.61
‘‘’King Sejong (1418-1450) created han ’gul, an indigenous alphabet for the Korean people.
He felt that his people must have a writing system designed to express the language of their everyday
speech, and he wanted all his subjects to leam and use it readily. The new alphabet was promulgated in his
twenty-eighth year on the throne, in 1446. (Ki-Baik Lee, A New History o f Korea, trans. Edward W.
Wagner with Edward Schultz, Boston: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Press, 1984,
p. 192)
6lYung-Chung Kim, ed. and trans., Women o f Korea: A History from Ancient Times to 1945.
An abridged and translated edition o f Han 'guk Yosong-sa (Seoul, Korea: Ewha Woman’s University
Press, 1976), pp. 155-157.
In order to see how these seven points are regarded by modem young women, aged between
28 and 35 who are also Teachers College students at the present time, I asked six of them to comment on
the seven points of Naehun. It was not surprising to know that they all rejected #7, i.e., “she should not
indulge in studying or reading literature,” but #1-6 are still held in esteem, which they explained are good
values to keep. Two respondents mentioned specifically that since those are good values in life, male
counterparts, not just women, should follow them as well.
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Moreover, seven evils (chilgo chiak) by the Confucian dicta that women were
subjected to were harsh and inhuman although they were not related to disobedience of
the seven instructions. The seven evils were: (1) disobedience to parents-in-law, (2)
failure to bear a son, (3) adultery, (4) jealousy, (5) hereditary disease, (6) garrulousness,
and, (7) larceny.62
Naehun enjoyed surprising longevity because Korean women had no way of
modifying its commands. If they broke the rules, they would be ostracized. The general
marriage age was fourteen for girls and fifteen for boys. All marriages were arranged,
which meant the bride and groom met for the first time on their wedding day.63 Even if
the woman did not like the man, she was nonetheless trapped with him and his family
until death. The man, on the contrary, was allowed to have as many secondary wives
(concubines) as he could afford. A woman was not permitted to remarry even if she was
a young widow. A widow who remained chaste until death was recognized approvingly,
while those who broke the rules and remarried were punished: their sons were not hired
to HU government posts and were thus denied any possibility of upward mobility.
Women could not go out freely and even when they were allowed to go out, they had to
wear ssugechima, a kind of veil whose variety in quality distinguished upper-class from
lower-class women.
62Ibid., p. 89.
wMy parents met each other for the first time on their wedding day. My mother was twenty
years old, considered an old maid, and worried her parents. The reason for the “late marriage” was that my
mother wanted to go to school but could not. Luckily, my parents liked each other on their first meeting.
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Women’s Education and Social Status after K a ehw a
Although the initial reactions to Kaehwa ideology on the part o f Korean
women were slow, negligible, and confused, the basic philosophy of the Enlightenment
proved to be enormously beneficial to women and the Kaehwa period marked important
milestones in the lives of women.
Modem education for women began as a result of Protestant Christian
missionaries. The missionaries’ efforts made sense to many Korean women like the
mothers of my three subjects because they addressed the very issues women had suffered
under—in other words, female issues—and wanted to see changed, but had no power to
change themselves. Some of them are as follows:
1. The missionaries were strongly critical o f the fact that men spent much
time smoking, drinking, using opium, and gambling. They asserted that
these habits were morally wrong, bad for their health, and detrimental to
their families’ financial situation. They attempted to transplant
“temperance” from the U.S. into Korea. This criticism by missionaries
made particular sense to women, who did not practice these vices
themselves but who suffered from their husbands or fathers incurring debt
for their vices, and ruining their families.
2. The missionaries believed and preached that Buddhism, Confucianism,
and Shamanism (see the following section on religions of Korea), the
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54
traditional religions of Korea, were unscientific and unhelpful to women.
When women such as the three mothers of Kim, Pahk, and Lee sought a
new faith that might change their social and cultural status and give their
lives a “new meaning,” the message of Christianity was a welcome and
convincing one.
3. Marriage and funeral habits to be changed. The missionaries denounced
“child marriage” and criticized the funeral rituals. They disapproved of
the excessive wailing at funerals, of family members wearing crude white
linen overalls reserved only for funerals, and of the large amounts of food
provided for ancestor worship. Women were supposed to wail more than
men, sometimes even faking their grief with loud but tearless voices since
the highest pitch o f wailing was regarded as the sign o f sadness and
respect for the dead.64 Food for ancestor worship was expensive and its
preparation entailed hard work for the women of the house, even though
they were not allowed to participate in the rituals. The missionaries
viewed these practices as unreasonable and uneconomical considering the
poor standard o f life that generally prevailed, and women who sought
change liked the idea of simplifying, if not completely eliminating, them.
Furthermore, the missionaries emphasized equality between the genders and
between the rich and poor as children of God. This was a basic human right, a woman’s
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female converts. The teaching of equality, the elimination of the class system, at least in
theory, and the increase in opportunities for education led the new women converts to
develop a nationalistic pride that turned into a fierce patriotism. In short, the ideology of
Kaehwa in the early 1900s was to raise the consciousness to foster education and thereby
improve the standard of life that would help to build the nation.
Other Supports that Helped Women’s Cause (Reforms and Newspapers)
The Tonghak uprising (1894) and the Kabo reform (1894)65 also helped to
improve the social status of women. For example, alter the Kabo reform “child
marriages” were abolished and remarriage for widows was legalized. People began to
wear Western clothes that were considered not just “fashionable” but practical and
convenient. After the Kabo reform, the Ministry of Education promulgated elementary
schools in 1895, although no attention was given to women’s education. However,
policy makers were becoming more conscious of the issue.
For example, the Independence Club66 (Tongnip Hydphoe) led by Dr. So
Chae Pil, an American educated Christian, had a young people’s group in which the
64When my mother died in 1982, a woman relative criticized my two sisters and me for our
lack of wailing and attributed it to the modem education we received.
65The Reform of 1894, Men of the Progressive Party initiated various reforms of political,
administrative, economic, and social fabric of Korea, and as such, it holds a great significance in the history
of Korea’s modernization process. (Ki-Baik Lee, A New History o f Women, p. 293)
66The Independence Club was founded in 1896 by So Chae Pil (Philip Jaisohn), who had
exiled to America and got an American education. Upon returning home, he began the Club for more
modem and democratic issues by criticizing the traditional system. Increasingly, the Club was joined and
supported by a wide spectrum of citizens. The first priority of the Club was to launch a campaign of public
education by instituting a public debate and publishing daily The Independent (Tongnip Sinmun). To
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importance of female education was discussed, and The Tongnip Sinmun (The
Independent) of the organization editorialized the issue: “.. .Though the government just
started to teach the children, girls are still neglected. How could they discriminate
against girls...? It is proper to match a school for girls whenever they found a school for
boys....”67
As early as March 1,1899, the same newspaper published an article asserting
that in the advanced and civilized countries of the West, three important institutions
served to educate people: churches, schools for boys and girls, and newspapers. The
article further noted that “even church itself becomes a school: church is for religious
services and for education.” The article appealed to and educated its readers on the point
that a deeply religious person was also an educated, and civilized person. The religion
under discussion was, of course, Christianity. Kenneth Wells argues that
Korea’s Protestants divined no tension between faith and
civilization.. .did not bother with the question of whether civilization
belonged to ‘nature’ or ‘grace.’ Although they recognized that the
separation of knowledge and virtue was possible, they regarded it as an
aberration, and for that reason defined the civilized person as one who
was spiritually refined.68
The newly converted women who hungered for change for themselves and for
their fellow women did not know how to get support from any authority. The Tongnip
Sinmun helped supply this need in an editorial. Thus, to many converts, Christian church
attract a wide readership, it was published in Han 'gul without using the Chinese. This was important for
women since the majority of them did not know Chinese. (Ibid., pp. 302-305)
61Tongnip Sinmun, May 12, 1896.
“ Kenneth M. Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction
Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), p. 11.
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functioned not only as a place for worship, but also as an educative institution where
literacy could be obtained to read the Bible, and where sermons were given on the
importance of good habits of hygiene. Above all, they offered an avenue to activate a
new phenomenon for the first time: men and women could finally gather together to pray
and build the nation.
The Importance of Context
I argue in this dissertation that studying history within a context that was
defined by the women under consideration enables us to understand more clearly why
they took certain positions and made specific judgments about important issues. By
identifying the contexts relevant to these women, it is possible to leam more about who
they really were. By focusing on how the daughters mitigated their mothers’ life
histories, it is possible to see the processes the daughters went through in order to be able
to raise the consciousness of the women of their generation. As Bourque and Divine
point out:
Context, itself, consists of three components: Structure, relationship,
and consciousness. Each of these components presupposes the other
two and must be defined in terms of its connection with the others....
The most striking of these components is, perhaps, structure: the
families, villages, nations, schools, and clubs in which women might
find themselves. Structures foster their own traditions.... A second
component, relationship, arises often but not as a consequence of
structure, because structure promotes interaction that results in
emotional bonding.... Structures and relationships inspire and make
inevitable a domain of intellectual activities—musing, questioning,
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reflecting, and reasoning—and we incorporate these activities in...the
final component of consciousness.69
To understand which experiences were particularly educative for Kim, Pahk, and
Lee, and how they connected themselves to other women’s lives, we must consider two
specific contexts: (1) the broad historical contexts, in which these mothers and daughters
lived, and (2) the individual contexts—families, schools, churches, and the interactions
among these entities. At these institutions, consciousness can be raised by exchanges of
ideas, telling stories of their lives and those of their mothers, reflections, and prayers.
Once the consciousness gains power among the people involved, it provides opportunities
on how to change the existing order and how to activate hitherto suppressed human
capacities, although it can also create insecurities for many women, since they have to
enter uncharted territory.
The three strong mothers of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young—women of the
Kaehwa period—lived through huge changes in politics, culture, and religion. Through
these changes, they were empowered to ignore the old traditions and to “activate hitherto
suppressed human capacities” by providing their daughters with the kind of learning
opportunities and formal education they had wanted all their lives for themselves. For
the first time, the new culture and the new religion from the West opened doors that had
been long closed.
69Bourque and Divine, pp. 4-5.
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Their uncompromising determination came from their childhood education by
simply living with and witnessing their mothers’ plight, which had taught them the
difference between justice and injustice and the ability to distinguish between them.
Their sympathy for the sufferings o f women intensified because their mothers had been
affected by the unjust. Deeply religious, the three women worked hard to derive
education from schools, churches, rural areas, and traveling. Most important, they
learned from their mothers and other women who shared similar experiences. For them,
living was learning.
A Short History of Religion in Korea
Though their primary mission has been to spread the teachings o f Christianity,
Christian missionaries have often had a dramatic effect on both the history and culture of
an area where they have chosen to work. Korea is one such case. To understand why
Protestant Christian missionaries were successful in Korea, beginning in the mid­
nineteenth century, it is important to know the history both of the country’s traditional
religions and the different ways in which its native people worshipped. The following is
a necessarily brief historical overview.
Three Traditional Religions of Korea
For many centuries, the people of Korea followed three main traditional
religions.
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1. Shamanism has primitive origins in hunter-gatherer and neolithic societies.
It is the oldest form of religion, a belief in natural spirits who must be propitiated by
prayer and worship. Earth, air and water are peopled with gods and demons, most of
them malevolent. Believers pray for personal benefits, for health, wealth, and relief from
illness. Altruism and the strengthening of personal character are not elements.
Shamanism, although rife with fear and superstition, still appeals to many Koreans. It is
difficult to determine when and how it rooted in the minds of Korean people because one
assumes that it began at the same time as the birth of the Korean populace.
2. Buddhism was introduced to Korea in 372 bv wav of China. For many
centuries it attracted devotees, with its majestic temples, monasteries, sacred writings,
and the teachings of its “benevolent and thoughtful divinities.” However, after a long
period of time, the Buddhist priesthood became corrupt and politicized, eventually
abandoning the practices of celibacy and self-abnegation demanded of it. By the
nineteenth century, Buddhism had begun to lose adherents and was becoming a less
important religion to the people of Korea.
3. Confucianism is not a religion in the theological sense, but a set of moral
and ethical principles that has spread over much of the Asian continent. Korea has been
the most devoted follower of those principles. As early as 875, Korean scholar Ch’oe
Ch'i-won, who had gone to China to study the Chinese classics, brought Confucianism
home to his people. When the Yi dynasty headed by General Yi S6ng-gye came into
power in 1392, Confucianism was made the state religion of Korea and ruled the lives of
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61
the people for the next five hundred years.70 Confucianism advocates good and
harmonious relationships among fellow human beings; it teaches that there is only one
life on earth and that the actors in that life should behave harmoniously. Though
Confucianism taught its Korean followers an ethical system, it taught nothing religiously
because it was not a spiritual system and it failed to touch human hearts and souls. It was
practical, but it lacked ideals that encouraged spiritual growth. While it served as a
prescription for the present life with its system o f “do’s and don’t’s,” it served only the
upper certain classes. Though this imported system of morals and ethics helped to form
the character of the people and shape the civilization o f Korea throughout many centuries
it did not help the Korean masses out of the oppression and poverty under which they
suffered; corruption among government officials—the proponents of Confucian morals—
was rampant; and women were unspeakably degraded by the teachings of Confucianism.
Curiously, most Koreans adhere to these three religions somewhat
indiscriminately and simultaneously. That is, no Korean worships one faith solely.71
According to Paik, this particular phenomenon “ .. .has a deeper significance: it is a sign
of the demand for a universal religion which can offer all that other religions can offer—
the high ethical and moral standard of Confucianism, the religious inspiration of
70L. George Paik, The History o f Protestant Missions in Korea, 1832-1910 (Pyeng Yang,
Korea: Union Christian College Press, 1929), pp. 16-23.
7>My mother is a good example. When I was little, she took me to her temple located on a
small mountain without proper public transportation. I remember I hated walking up the mountain. At the
same time, we frequented a “shaman’s” house when one o f us fell ill. Mother paid die shaman and prayed
while the shaman performed a ritual. She received a talisman (a piece of rice paper on which unintelligible
words were stamped in red ink) for the sick child, and some more paper to take home to bum, the ashes of
which were poured in a glass of water which the sick drank. Mother also adhered to Confucian ethics and
rules in everyday life.
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Buddhism, and the mysteries of life and death and of the spiritual world of Shamanism"
He further explains that from this phenomenon one can conclude that the Korean people
seem to be either indifferent or overly tolerant to religion but instead, it is an indication of
“a religious hunger.”72 Paik is saying here that while Korean people were attracted to
religion for their spiritual growth, the three main religions each provided them
conveniently with certain aspects of faith, thereby producing a people somewhat hungry
for one dominant religion to adhere to. Thus, they were receptive to the new religion of
Christianity. The Christian faith gave its followers a new identity for the first time in
their lives—feelings of “love and service,” idealistic yearnings, and a sense of inclusion
that appealed to poor, unvalued women such as the three mothers of Kim, Pahk, and Lee.
The Arrival of Christianity
The Roman Catholic Mission. Before the arrival of the Protestant
missionaries in the mid-nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had tried to gain
ground in Korea. In 1783, a young Korean man, Yi Sung-hun, was sent to Peking as an
official envoy to China. In Peking, he converted to Catholicism, received baptism, and
was given a Christian name, Peter, with the hope that he would become a founding father
of the Korean Catholic church. Another attempt was made by La Societe des Missions
Etrangeres, a French missionary society working in the Far East that decided to establish
a mission in Korea. In 1832, Barthelemy Brugiere, then a missionary in Bangkok,
7IIbid., pp. 26-38.
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Thailand, was nominated Vicar Apostolic of Korea by La Societe des Missions
Etrangeres.73
However, early Catholic mission work in Korea met with little success. The
early missionaries were in the country one hundred years before Kaehwa (Enlightenment)
took place, which meant that the Korean people were still closed and feudal in their
mentality and unwilling to accept Western “infiltration.” The French priests were seen as
political and imperialistic—a threat to the country, although their self-sacrifice, patience,
and capacity to endure hardship was recognized. From 1832, when the first church was
founded by Yi Sung-hun, to 1866, when a wholesale persecution of Catholic martyrs took
place, many converts (no exact number has been ascertained) as well as priests were
killed by the Korean government. The Korean Catholics’ martyrdom was so renowned in
the Catholic world that when Pope John Paul II went to Korea in 1993, two hundred and
two Catholics were beautified and made saints.74
The Protestant Missionaries Arrive. In 1883, a year after Korea and the U.S.
signed the treaty of commerce, Lucius H. Foote was sent to Korea to assume the post of
deputy ambassador; and Min Yong Ik, a nephew of powerful Queen Min, was sent as
Korean ambassador to the U.S. Upon arriving in San Francisco, Min met Dr. John F.
Goucher, a Christian minister and the dean of Goucher Women’s College in Baltimore,
Maryland and told him o f the harsh conditions of life in Korea. Dr. Goucher became
73Ibid.
^Conversation with Dr. David K. Suh, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, March 22,
2001 .
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interested in doing missionary work in Korea and wrote in 1884 to a Methodist
missionary in Japan, Robert S. Maclay, regarding that possibility.75
At the same time, the North Methodist regional missionaries met in Ravenna,
Ohio, where a great deal of curiosity and sympathy for Korea was aroused among the
participants, and an elderly lady by the name of L. B. Baldwin attending the meeting
donated her savings, asking specifically that they be used for educational mission work
for Korean women. Thus, a chance meeting between Min and Dr. Goucher and the gift
from Mrs. Baldwin at the meeting ignited a small fire of enthusiasm about the prospect of
mission work in Korea.
In 1884, Horace N. Allen, an American missionary who was also a medical
doctor, arrived in Korea. The Korean government did not allow missionary activity, so
Dr. Allen hid his interest in such endeavors under the guise o f being an official doctor for
the American Legation. In the same year, the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of
the Methodist Church sent Mrs. Mary F. Scranton, accompanied by her son, William B.
Scranton, M.D., and his wife, as the first female missionary to Korea. While Dr.
Scranton checked out living conditions and safety, the two Scranton women waited for a
year in Japan. By the time they at last arrived in Korea, other notable missionaries, such
as Mr. Horace G. Underwood, a Presbyterian, and Mr. and Mrs. Henry G. Appenzeller,
who were Methodists, had also been sent to work among the Korean people.76
75Yung-Chung Kim, p. 214.
76Ewha Paek Nyun Sa (Hundred Years o f Ewha History (Seoul, Korea: Ewha Woman’s
University Press, 1994), pp. 32-45.
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The female missionaries who traveled to Korea were among the women of
mid-nineteenth century America who had already begun to assume responsibilities
outside the domestic sphere. For example, women’s clubs were organized; Sunday
schools were taught by women; and religious groups and their mission boards were
sending women missionaries around the world to work in medical and teaching positions.
These women considered their mission work a vocation, a calling to make the world a
better place—a reality that would happen only if all its peoples became Christians. Mrs.
Mary Scranton, the founder o f Ewha, and many others who followed her to Korea were
among the shining lights of this company of dedicated women.77
Various Missions. From 1889 to 1897, the total number of different missions
was nine. The missionaries themselves realized that considering the small size of the
country the occupation of the field by numerous missions could produce only conflict,
different opinions, and inefficient organization—hence little cooperation from the Korean
people. Therefore, they decided to agree on the general policy that represented all
missions.
After a few years o f dispute among themselves, in 1893 the Council of
Missions adopted several rules under which these missions would agree. They adopted
ten points that represented the principles of the Protestant missions. However, for the
purposes of this study, only three points are introduced here that are relevant. The
Council reached a consensus that (1) it was better to aim at the conversion of the working
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classes than of the higher classes; (2) the conversion of women and the training of
Christian girls should be a special aim, since mothers exercised such an important
influence over future generations; and (3) the masses of Koreans must be led to Christ by
their own fellow countrymen; therefore, we shall thoroughly train a few as evangelists
rather than preach to a multitude ourselves.78 While the status of women then was
extremely low, in fact, their influence in raising their children was acknowledged because
men were not expected to engage themselves in child rearing, believing that it would
lower their dignity.
Medicine and the Missionaries
In 1884, the internally turbulent political scene in Korea led to a coup d'etat,
known as kapsin chongbyon, between the two factions of Progressives and
Conservatives. The agenda pushed forward by the Progressives included an end to the
empty formalities of the tributary relationship with China; abolish ruling class privilege
and establish equal rights for all; revise the land tax laws; punish the crimes of the most
notorious officials and so forth. But they still were not concerned about women's issues
such as equal opportunity for education, legal protection for widows, and abolishment of
child marriage.79
77Mary Lee Talbot, A School at Home: The Contribution o f the Chautauqua Literary and
Scientific Circle to Women's Educational Opportunities in the Gilded Age, 1874-1900 (Ph.D. dissertation,
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, 1997).
78Paik, pp. 187-191, requote C. C. Vinton, “Presbyterian Mission Work in Korea,” The
Missionary Review o f the World, N.S., Vol. 6, No. 9 (September 1893), p. 671.
79Ki-Baik Lee, A New History o f Korea, pp. 276-278.
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Queen Min's nephew, Min Yong Ik, who had just returned home from the
States, received a serious wound during the incident. No Korean doctor with modem
medical knowledge and resources was available to treat the wounded Min. Dr. Allen of the
American Legation was called in, treated him expertly, and received recognition and
admiration from the Palace. This incident marked the beginning of building a relationship
between the foreign missionaries and the Korean authorities, a relationship that led to the
opening of the first modem hospital, with Dr. Allen as its head. “The recognition that the
government had given to Western medical science, and the desire for relief from physical
pain removed at last all inhibitions against foreigners... the ineffectiveness of the Korean
doctors' concoctions and magical practices as compared with Western medicine, they
[Korean people] turned to foreign doctors. Thus these physicians [Western]...broke down
prejudices and suspicion, and won the confidence of the people."80
The medical missionary, Dr. Allen, and the people who worked with him had
three obligations: supervision of the Government hospital after the successful treatment
of Min Yong Ik; supervision of medical education and practice among Korean men; and
provision of medical services to foreign residents. Thus, in 1885, the first modem
hospital, Kwanghye-won (Hospital for Great Grace) was founded and one year later in
1886 it changed to Jejung-wdn (Hospital for People) where the first department for
women patients was instituted and a female medical doctor, Lillian Horton, along with a
missionary doctor, Annie Ellers, started a section for gynecology. As with schools and
80Paik, p. 117.
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churches, in which women and men were segregated, it became clear that a hospital for
women only was necessary. In 1887, a hospital exclusively for women, Bogu Ydkwan
(House for Protection of Women), was founded and its first woman doctor was Dr. Meta
Howard, and in 1890, Dr. Rosetta Sherwood joined the hospital and nearly 5,500 poor
female patients were treated by these doctors in the next three years. This “hospital” was
neither well-equipped nor sufficiently staffed; nevertheless, it served the purpose of
educating Ewha students in medical and nursing courses as well as treating thousands of
Korean women who would not have otherwise been taken care of. Through the
experiences gained from this institution, the first Korean medical doctor, Esther Pak, an
Ewha graduate, became a doctor after getting a medical degree from a woman’s medical
college (name unknown) in Baltimore, Maryland in 1900.81
In order to gain acceptance from the native people, the missionaries began
their work in areas where needs were immediate and their work would be respected.
Both David Kwang Sun Suh82 and George Paik83 argue that the first missionaries did not
plan on education or on medical work per se; rather, their primary aim was to spread the
Christian faith. Only after they saw the reality of the conditions of life under which
Koreans, and women in particular, were living did they begin their educational and
medical mission work.
8‘Lee Hyo Jae, Han "guk Ydsdngsa: Kaehwagi-1945, "Kaehwagi YdsdngyiSahoe Jinchul"
(Seoul, Korea: Ewha Woman’s University Press, 1972), pp. 35-36.
“ Han’guk Ydsdngsa, “Korean Women and Religion,” in History o f Korean Women.
83Paik, pp. 109-117.
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Translation of the Bible
The Korean translation of the Bible—the entire New Testament—was
completed and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1887.84 New
Christian converts—especially women, including the mothers of Kim, Pahk, and Lee who
were not able to read Chinese, could finally read the Bible in their own language. From
the missionaries’ standpoint, the translation project was a success both in spreading the
gospel and educating the populace, both male and female.
Birth of Ewha (1886)
Ewha was and still is an important institution of learning for women. It was
the first such institution, a Christian mission school founded in 1886 in Seoul, Korea by a
foreign Christian woman, Mary Finch Scranton, in an old society that was still practicing
traditional religions. The short history of the school that I provide here will give the
reader an insight into the academic, spiritual, and social aspects of my three subjects’
formal education.
Mary Finch Scranton at first had a hard time setting up her school, not only
because she had no place to teach but also because it was difficult to recruit students.
Korean officialdom did not appreciate or accept Western missionaries spreading the
Christian religion, and the general populace was frightened and confused by the rumor
that the foreigners would kidnap, abuse, and even cannibalize their children.
MIbid., p. 140.
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On May 31, 1886, a well-dressed woman accompanied by a servant came to
Mrs. Scranton’s “living room.” This woman was the ambitious concubine of a high
government official, and she wanted to leant English in order to become an interpreter to
Queen Min, the most powerful woman in the Palace. After three months of learning
English, this visitor left. The next month, a girl in her mid-teens appeared, telling Mrs.
Scranton that she had come to leant in her school in order to escape poverty. However,
the girl’s mother visited Mrs. Scranton to reclaim the girl because she was frightened by
her neighbors’ “report” that the Americans would keep her daughter at the school a few
days, then ship her off to America. The mother thought that poverty would be better than
losing her daughter to strange Westerners. Only after Mrs. Scranton signed a hurriedly
prepared contract of sorts did the mother leave her daughter in Mrs. Scranton’s care.
This girl’s name was Lee U1 La,85 and she was considered the first student in Mrs.
Scranton’s “living room school.”
The third student was rescued by Mrs. Scranton’s son, Dr. Scranton. During
May and July of 1886, cholera was killing thousands of people. A woman who was
dying in the street was picked up by Dr. Scranton and brought to the hospital with her
little daughter, who became the third student in the “living room school.” Thus, girls
were collected here and there, and by the end of the year, the number of students totaled
seven.
85Eighty Years o f Ewha History (Seoul, Korea: Ewha Woman’s University Press, 1966),
p. 44.
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In 1887, the name Ewha (pear flower) was given to Mrs. Scranton’s “living
room school” by Queen Min, who recognized the school as a charitable work for poor
girls. In her book, The Gospel in All Lands, published in 1888, Mrs. Scranton states,
“Our purpose is not to change Korean girls into mimicking foreigners’ lifestyle. We will
be most happy if we succeed to make them ‘better Korean.’ We hope that the Korean
girls will be proud of their heritage and that along the way, they become ‘perfect Korean’
according to the image of Christ and his teaching.”86 It may sound presumptuous that a
foreigner, who did not know the language, literature, religion, and anthropological fabric
of Korean society, would attempt to make the students “perfect Koreans” or “better
Korean.” However, the missionaries only meant that they hoped the girls o f Ewha,
whose ages ranged between seven to eighteen, would not follow their mothers’ and
grandmothers’ way of life o f indolence, ignorance, and superstition.
The missionaries were very conscious of the fact that their young students
were taking notice of the material comforts and freedom of thought, speech, and
movement of the Westerners around them. Afraid that the young girls might want to
imitate such a different lifestyle, they encouraged the students to preserve and be proud
of the good parts of their culture and heritage. The girls were advised neither to mimic
their foreign teachers and their lifestyles nor to follow their mothers’ traditional and
indigenous way of life. They had, in short, to balance these two challenges. The life
86“The Gospel in All Lands (1888),” requote from Eighty Years o f Ewha History, p. 89.
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stories of Kim, Pahk, and Lee will reveal how they resolved that challenge of balance.
For them, the idea of “better Korean” or “perfect Korean” meant “good Christian.”
Historical Divisions of Ewha
The development o f Ewha can be divided into three historical periods:
• Ewha Hakdang (1886*1910) - This period is known as an “awakening
time”—waking up from a long sleep during which Korean women had been subjugated
and oppressed.
• Ewha College (1910-1925) - During this period, the school at last became
worthy of being called a proper institution for the higher education of women.
• Ewha JunMun (1925-1945) - This was a period of academic growth and
campus expansion, which took place under Japanese colonialism.
From 1886 to 1945, the headmistresses/principals were all American
Protestant missionary teachers—Mary F. Scranton, Louisa C. Rothweiler, Josephine O.
Paine, Lulu E. Frey, Mary R. Hillman, J. C. Marker, Alice R. Appenzeller, A. Jeannette
Walter, and Edna M. Van Fleet.87
Ewha Hakdang (1886-19101. The curriculum during these early years was
elementary because teachers were few and textbooks were scarce. The most important
subjects were Bible study and English. The girls considered the Bible an excellent book
and they enjoyed its stories. In order to read them, they had to learn the Korean phonetic
87Collection of documents for A Hundred Years o f Ewha History (Seoul, Korea: Ewha
Woman’s University Press, 1994), pp. 249-255. When the Japanese colonialists intervened in Ewha, the
missionaries went home, leaving the acting principal position to Helen Kim in 1939.
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73
alphabet. A few years later, basic biology and physical education were added to the
curriculum because the missionaries noticed the total lack of exercise undertaken by the
girls, who still lived with ssugechima (veil) on their heads. In 1896, dressmaking and
embroidery were added. The curriculum sought to teach young women the basic
necessities of life and practical female responsibilities.
Although English was an important subject, students as well as parents wished
to add Chinese to the curriculum—a language hitherto denied to them since it had been
available only to men. The reasons for wanting to study Chinese were many. The
language and philosophy of China was an integral part of Korea’s cultural fabric. To
leam English only was like throwing away a piece o f their old culture, even though that
culture, dominated by Confucianism, had victimized women for centuries. To answer this
demand, Mrs. Scranton hired a male Chinese teacher in 1892—because, of course, no
female teacher was available—who taught the girls with his back turned to them and his
face to the blackboard so that he and the girls would not be face-to-face. This
proscription against males and females seeing each other was also played out in hospitals,
churches, schools, and many other such places. Mrs. Scranton writes in her report to the
mission board about the Sunday school she had established at Ewha in 1888: “On
Sundays quite a large number of people attend the service. Two weeks ago there were
about 30 people beside our own students. I am having a difficult time to recruit women
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74
preachers so I had to hire men who are the Bible salesmen with the curtain installed
dividing women from men so that they do not see each other.”88
Despite the contact with and influence of American teachers who acted as
counselors, dormitory directresses, and mentors, the Ewha girls continued for many years
to wear Korean national dresses that were impractical and cumbersome. From 1886 to
1902, the school provided their clothing, which consisted o f an ankle-length skirt and a
baggy jacket, and rather tight cotton socks. The girls wore their hair in long braids tied
with ribbons, and until 1908, older girls had to cover their heads and face with
ssugechima (veils) for outings.
The general public called Ewha Yang GukKwan (a house for Westerners),
a name that carried an overtone of derision and the young women students were
characterized as “Americanized” by both curiosity-seekers and the Korean women who
watched what was happening at the school. This description was either used with disdain
or simply meant “lively and active” by Korean standards. It took a certain courage or
strong conviction on the part of the parents—except for the converts—who decided to
send their young daughters to Ewha precisely because the school provided a Western
environment controlled by Western women.
88Eighty Years o f Ewha History, p. 50. Requote W. C. Barclay, The History o f the Methodist
Mission, vol. VI, part II (The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1845-1909), pp. 742-750. I had a conversation
with Pauline Kim, a graduate of Ewha class of 1923, who was a contemporary of Helen Kim and a member
of the Ewha Evangelic Group of Seven headed by Helen Kim, in 1996 in Seoul and she told me the same
story.
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Ewha College 0910-1925)
This was a politically trying period in Korea because of the Japanese
annexation of the country in 1910. Ewha’s administration made an effort to prepare for
the real possibility that the country might be completely lost to Japan. They began
offering college-level courses in 1910, and a college-level department of education was
added in 1915, with an adjoining kindergarten—the rationale being that the department
was to train teachers who would raise the children of Korea in a Christian fashion.
When these changes were suggested, some parents complained that the
school’s few resources should be used to educate more pupils at a lower level, that it was
too early for Korean women to receive a college education, and that qualified teachers
were scarce; but the principal at the time, Lulu Frey, had her way and opened the college
in 1910 with just fifteen students. During this period, more sports programs were
instituted; ssugechima (veil) was abolished; and the traditional Korean skirt with a tight
chest bodice (in order to suppress the growth of the female chest) was modified to a
looser, freer garment.
The girls’ first reaction to these changes was not enthusiastic because they felt
as if they were betraying their mothers who had told them to bind their chests in order not
to allow them to develop. In fact, big-chested Western women who showed their natural
contours were a spectacle and source of public talk.89 Jeannette Walter in her book Aunt
Jean writes:
89Conversation with Pauline Kim, June 1996.
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About three months after we made this change at Ewha, we went to
Yeng Byen during the summer and went to the little country church on
Sunday. A group of little schoolgirls sat on the floor in front o f us.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that they all had little waists on their
skirts. After the service was over, I asked them where they got the
idea, and they replied that an Ewha girl had come home from school
and had shown them this new style, and they were all going to be like
the girls down at Ewha. We were thrilled, and felt that we had really
done something that would be healthful to the women of the whole
country.90
One might say these changes were only minor, but this was the first time and the first
institution in Korean history where the traditional bondage of women, literal and
figurative, in the form of restrictive clothing that covered them almost from head to toe,
was lifted at long last.
In 1914, the first commencement for college women took place with just three
graduating students. During this period, both Kim and Pahk attended Ewha College.
They were the only graduates in 1916 and 1918, respectively. Kim reminisced about that
first commencement of 1914:
I sat among Ewha students watching breathlessly as the first three
women college graduates marched in wearing caps and gowns....
Everyone was proud of them as potential leaders in the nation. The
audience rose and stood in silence. It was a scene that had never
before taken place in Korea. For girls to go to college and graduate
and enter into professions was unheard of thing. As the three girls
took their seats.. .thrills ran up and down my back and tears rolled
down upon my cheeks. I looked around and saw that others were
crying too, even some men. These were tears of joy for the
accomplishments of girls so long neglected and looked down upon.
There was rejoicing over the fact that Korean women were proving
“ Jeannette Walter, Aunt Jean (Boulder, Colo.: Johnson Publishing Co., 1967), p. 96. She
was a missionary teacher at Ewha from 1911 to 1923.
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that they too are capable o f higher education, and of realizing
opportunities for better life and greater achievements.91
The founding missionaries emphasized to Ewha students that they must
engage themselves in acquiring knowledge as well as in dedicating themselves to serving
the poor, the ignorant, and the sick. Social service was strongly encouraged, and students
were told that such work could be done by women more efficiently and lovingly than by
men, thus reinforcing the nurturing capabilities expected of a female and at the same time
promoting a Christian spirit of service.
In 1909, “King’s Daughters,” a Christian prayer group, was organized on a
campus-wide basis, and all the students automatically became members. Through
prayers, soul searching, and spiritual growth, the girls became to believe that they were
the daughters of God, which in their eyes was the first step toward achieving equality
among class and gender. To the Ewha girls of that generation, to which Kim and Pahk
belonged, who were shunned from society simply because they were female, a prayer
group such as “King’s Daughters” gave them a sense of belonging, a sense of unity, the
feeling of inclusion, and the motivation to do good in their lives.
During summer vacations, the students went to their hometowns and villages
and worked to eliminate illiteracy by teaching Bible studies. The village women loved
these classes because they could leave their homes for an hour or two, assemble with
other women, leam how to read, and enjoy what they read.
9lHelen Kim, Grace Sufficient, p. 31.
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If “King’s Daughters” was a group devoted to spiritual growth, the “Literary
Society,” founded in 1907, was for intellectual growth. Once a week, the students and
teachers met for discussions and debates on current issues and also to perform music and
drama. The girls had no experience of speaking in a public forum, but through debates,
speech contests, and drama they acquired skills in public speaking, developed their ability
for rational thought, and expressed their artistic abilities. This kind of exercise was
particularly important to these girls as it helped build self-confidence and self-esteem.
Ewha Jun Mun (1925-1945). During this period Ewha developed a more
Western style of education. Western music and Western cooking classes, with lectures on
the value of vitamins and certain nutrients, were added during these years. The teachers
told the students that they should keep and value their own music and art o f cuisine, but
also leant new things from other countries. In this way, teachers kept their promise not to
make Korean girls “American mimics.”
In 1925, the college had seventy students, and by the next year, one hundred
ten girls were enrolled from all over the country. Both parents and young women had
begun to see that the foreign missionaries were indeed making sincere efforts to educate
Korean women. Still, the number of graduating girls was only one-third o f the entering
class because of the pressure that parents continued to put on their daughters to marry at a
young age.
The school had always stressed the importance and necessity of early
education for small children. As the country was threatened by the Japanese colonialists,
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79
the missionaries wished to make the country Christian and felt an urgency to teach
children as early as possible in their lives. In 1928, therefore, the “Kindergarten Training
School” was instituted, and a beautiful stone building was made possible by the
W.F.M.S. (Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society); this school still remains a model
kindergarten facility. Meetings were instituted for mothers who were skeptical about
kindergarten education, and a program was added for the mothers’ recreation. The
kindergarten taught a progressive approach that soon became popular among mothers
who had wished in the beginning to have more study programs than play and
socialization. In fact, Ewha Kindergarten became renowned for being modeled after an
American kindergarten; once parents learned to appreciate the fact that playtime provides
children with socialization skills that are also a part of the learning process.
During this period, Ewha’s own culture was solidly established as Korean,
American, and Christian, despite Japanese control in the country and on the campus.
Many Ewha graduates had already achieved such academic accomplishments as earning
Ph.D. and M.D. degrees, as well as becoming excellent teachers. The Japanese police
were indirectly keeping an eye on church activities that were, they thought, the pretext for
promoting nationalism, but these activities were not completely prohibited because the
Japanese did not wish to antagonize the American missionaries too much. Ewha students
continued to teach village women and underprivileged women literacy, Bible studies, and
nationalism under the watchful eye of the Japanese.
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The school’s badge, proudly worn by all the students, was the shape of a pear
blossom, the emblem of the name of the school; in the flower, the words Truth,
Goodness, and Beauty, were engraved and entwined with a cross. In 1918, the year of
Induk’s graduation, she composed the school song with melodies borrowed from
Christian hymns and Western folk songs; she wrote lyrics praising Korean women’s
classic attributes—calmness, quietness, patience—as well as the loving and serving
Christian spirit that was their ideal image of a new woman.
In the 1920s, many publications appeared in the form of journals, pamphlets,
and magazines both in the large society and at Ewha campus, but they were all short­
lived due to lack of funds, lack of organization, and interference from the Japanese
authorities. But when the YWCA in Korea was established in 1922, due to Helen Kim’s
effort, Ewha students became involved in YWCA activities, one of which was to publish
leaflets and newsletters about the organization. Of course, these publications were
routinely censored by the Japanese. Finally in 1929, the first edition of the journal
“Ewha,” written by the students, saw the light of the press. At the same time, a journal in
English “The Ewha Weekly News Sheet” was also published.
The students were proud that their English was good enough to publish in a
foreign language and also that the Ewha education was not confined to accumulating
knowledge but included to putting that education to practical use. The interesting point
here is that English was vitally important to Ewha girls just as Chinese had been to the
educated Korean male. This is a sad commentary in the sense that a Korean had to learn
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81
a foreign language in order to be considered successful as an educated person. In 1932,
the board members and faculty decided that the curriculum must include hitherto
neglected classical Korean and Asian literature, noting that for the first few decades they
had been concentrating on the areas of basic education: the English language and Bible
studies. They also recommended more creative education, namely that students take
more initiatives and make decisions regarding their studies, in contrast to the rote
memory study mode that Korean students were accustomed to.
The campus expansion began in 1935, adding an auditorium where chapel was
held, a music hall for student performances, and a gymnasium for the girls’ health. These
halls symbolized the reforms that Ewha was proudly demonstrating to the whole country.
An auditorium for women to pray together and listen to sermons filled with the good
words o f the Bible—equality as children of God—was a welcome change to some but an
eyesore to others who still thought that women did not deserve it. Musicians had been
looked down upon as a low class of people, and now the school had built a hall for
performances given by women. It was also a revolutionary idea for women to perform
sports in a culture where tradition preferred to crush the development of a girl’s chest
with a tight bodice attached to a skirt. The missionaries as well as the students were
proud o f the construction of these halls and all the performances and productions held in
them—not only in terms of having those buildings themselves but also what they
represented in overcoming traditional taboos and a judgmental and unjust set of standards
for women.
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82
During this period in 1939, more history was made: Helen Kim was made the
principal of Ewha fifty-three years after the birth of the school. She was the first Korean
woman to assume such a post.
No sooner had they begun to enjoy their good life on the expanded Ewha
campus than World War II broke out in 1941 and Japan demanded that Ewha close its
doors, but they were unsuccessful thanks to Helen Kim’s strategy to keep it open (see
biography), sing the school song in the Japanese language, change everybody’s name into
Japanese, and cease publication of the English language student newsletter. Helen Kim
did not close the school and she cleverly held off the Japanese by temporizing with some
o f their demands. For instance, she read speeches prepared by the Japanese and
ostensibly took a Japanese name. She had learned how to survive and preserved Ewha.
The Japanese were particularly afraid o f spreading anti-Japanese sentiments and
promoting nationalism among the students. For these reasons, they confiscated books
from the library, suspecting the spread of nationalism, and tortured suspected leaders and
accused them of independence activities. Induk Pahk, as will be discussed in her
biography, was one such example.
Throughout the difficult four years of World War n, Helen Kim managed
campus affairs expertly while her missionary teachers and mentors had all been called
back home. Her main concern was not to lose the school to the Japanese but to keep it
Korean and in the hands of the Koreans. Funds from the Mission Board in the U.S.
stopped coming and Ewha faced financial difficulties. Some Korean teachers and parents
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83
suggested making Ewha co-educational in order to expand enrollment, which would
provide considerable economic advantages. Helen Kim rejected the idea and wanted to
keep the school for women only. She was successful in her endeavor to keep Ewha an
entirely Korean and entirely female institution of learning.
The missionary teachers had taught Ewha students to see themselves and their
society as vital entities, and to make a connection between the two. They did not convert
Korean women for the sake of making them Christians, although the conversion effort
was of foremost importance; rather, they instilled Christian principles in the students to
make them aware of their responsibilities to reform the existing system in order to serve
women first and help the nation in its modernization efforts. Kim, Pahk, Lee, and the
other women of Ewha devoted their lives to these three important causes: to raise the
standard of women’s lives in every possible way; to solidify an unwavering Christian
spirit; and to reconstruct the nation into a modem and “civilized” one. And in Ewha’s
spirit a “civilized” person meant a “Christian” person. The activist and reform-minded
education at Ewha enabled its female students to understand exactly who they were and
what they could achieve as women during this challenging moment of Korea’s history.
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Photograph 1. Helen Kim (with graduation cap and gown),
Principal Frey seated near Helen and other students, 1918
85
Chapter m
HELEN KIM (1899-1970)
Helen Kim is the best-known woman of the “new generation.” She was the
first Korean woman to receive a Ph.D. from an American university, Teachers College,
Columbia University in 1931; first Korean female president of an all female college,
Ewha in 1940; and a female candidate who ran for Parliament, although she lost in 1948;
and a female cabinet member in the Korean government in 1950. She was a symbol and
an icon of a struggling Korean woman caught between the old and the new culture. She
was admired, envied, ignored, and humiliated all her life by different groups o f people in
different trying periods of history. Her education was as remarkable as her
accomplishments. She was humble in her success and determined to do better in her
disappointment. Despite awesome fame and accomplishment, to the people who knew
her, she was a personable and generous woman who also possessed extraordinary
abilities for leadership with vision. She was a devout Christian with deep faith that had
sustained her whole life in both success and failure.
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Early Childhood Education (1899-1907)
Happy Childhood Memories: Family Dynamics: Mother as Teacher
On February 27,1899, in Jemulpo,92 South Korea, Helen Kim was bom “into
this happy family of Kims, humble in station, poor in material possessions, but rich in
family devotion and loyalty.”93 She was the youngest of seven children at birth and the
fifth daughter. Her father, Jin Yun Kim, and mother, Dora Pak, had hoped that their
seventh child would be a boy since they already had four girls. In addition, throughout
Korean history, male children were always preferred over female children. Helen
remembers a dream her mother related to her when she was pregnant with her daughter:
She said she had a dream at the time of conception in which she saw...
a tiger jumping down into her yard from the roof.... She was very
happy and looked at it more closely, only to find that it was a dog.. .a
tiger would represent a male with strength and importance; but the
dog.. .of much less value, would mean only a female.94
After relating the parents’ wish to have a son instead of a daughter and the
somewhat hurtful dream her mother had during pregnancy to Helen, Dora Pak
immediately explained that it was the customary thinking of the time, not their way of
life. She further explained that “she loved the dog just the same and treasured it as a gift
from heaven.”95
92In the late-nineteenth century, it was a booming seaport town about 25 miles from the
capital, Seoul, where the first treaty of commerce with the U.S. was signed in 1882. It is called Inchon
nowadays.
93 Helen Kim, Grace Sufficient: The Story o f Helen Kim (Nashville, Tenn.: The Upper
Room, 1964), pp. 2-3.
Ibid., p. 2.
95Ibid.
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When the newest baby girl was bom, she was perfunctorily given the name
“Ki Teuk.” “Ki” was the Chinese name of the year “Ki Hae” in which she was bom, and
“Teuk” was the Chinese character for “obtained.” Thus, girl number five was “obtained
in the year of Ki Hae, the pig’s year, according to the Chinese zodiac signs. Ki Teuk was
lucky to even have a name because, in those days, names were not given to female
babies, simply calling them Mr. Yi’s daughter, Mr. Pak’s daughter, and so forth.
Referring to the names, Helen remarks, “My family did better than others, for in many
cases girls were not important enough to be given a name at all. ..In contrast, when boys
were bom families spent time and money going to professional namers...% It was so
important to find and give a good name to a boy because it was believed that much of his
future would be determined by his name.” It may seem trivial to talk about a baby’s
name or lack thereof but in little Helen’s mind it was not fair that girls did not have
names while brothers had meaningful and individualized ones designed by professionals.
Despite the offhand treatment of baby girls, Helen felt she had a happy
childhood, mainly through the association with her mother and her sister Ellen, older by
eight years, who took Helen to the nearby stream to wade in and to the hills to climb in
order to catch the moving clouds in the sky while mother was busy doing household
chores. The frequent outings with Ellen cultivated in Helen an appreciation for the
beauty of the nature. Helen claims that “a special bond of affection” grew between them
^Professional namers are usually men who select a couple of names for parents for a fee after
consulting the baby’s time of birth, day, month, and year. These names are naturally in Chinese characters
canying meanings and symbols. Originated in China (I do not know the date) and adopted and used by
Korea to date. Kim, p. 3.
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and among the eight siblings, “I was always her favorite and she was mine.” Helen
reminisced about family washdays when the women of the family went to the nearby
stream to wash clothes, beating them against flat stones with wooden sticks and then
spread them under the sun while little Helen was jumping around to fix the clothes down
lest they be blown away by the wind. Afler the washing, they sat by the stream and had a
bowl of rice with some vegetables for a pleasant picnic. Her “happy experience” about
washing despite the lack of modem convenience brings an image in my mind—if modem
children go down to a basement laundry room or to a nearby coin operated laundromat
with an over-tired mother, would they have the same fun as Helen did? Perhaps, yes, if
the mother makes it fun. It is not life’s conveniences that make people happy, although
physically comfortable, but the relationship and interaction between the mother who
explains the reasons for certain things she has to do and the daughter who comprehends it
and sympathizes with the mother.
Many more happy memories, as reflected in Helen’s autobiography,
reinforced the trust that the young girl felt as she was growing up. Many of them
revolved around simple, mundane activities of a woman’s domain, particularly
housework and raising a family. Helen was learning to adopt these chores into her own
life, yet with an unparalleled enthusiasm that many women lacked because o f the
restrictions and expectations that society leveled at them to perform the work without
question or choice.
There were many more happy events and seasons during my
childhood. Near the stream in front of our house was our
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neighborhood well from which we drew our drinking water. Women,
like many across the world, filled up their earthen jars and carried
them on their heads. This was a job for grown-ups, but I wanted so
much to share it and asked mother to let me try. I was overwhelmed
when mother told me I could and gave me a miniature earthen jar she
had bought for me. I carried the water on my head all afternoon until I
filled up the big jar in our kitchen. My joy and satisfaction over this
accomplishment were complete.97
Not only had Dora given Helen an opportunity to mimic the adult task with a
small earthen replica, but the little girl patiently and joyfully achieved her task and was
proud of her accomplishment. It could be that she did this job as a curiosity; to be
praised by mother; to test her own patience whatever the motivation; the important fact is
that she finished it and both she and her mother were happy about it. This instilled
confidence in herself and appreciation for her mother’s hard labors.
Helen’s father, Jin Yun Kim, was a native of Uiju in the North Pyongan
Province. He had set off for the newly-opened port of Jemulpo in search of new job
opportunities. He worked briefly as an accountant for a Chinese merchant’s container
business, and then started a wholesale business of his own. Unfortunately, he lacked
good business sense and his enterprise floundered; his disposition was more of a
Confucian scholar, who regarded practical matters less important than his quest for
morals and ethics.98 Consequently, his growing family soon became a heavy financial
burden while Dora was raising pigs in the little yard to supplement the family budget.
97Ibid„ p. 7.
98A Confucian scholar of the time was considered high-minded in morals and ethics. He
refused to, or was incapable o f dealing with practical matters, thinking that his dignity would be diminished
if he engaged in domestic or financial enterprises. Thus, he was not even capable of saying “I love you” to
family members, including children, for the same reason.
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Like her husband, Dora Pak had been bom into a fanning family, also from
Uiju, the same hometown. Her father drank, gambled heavily, and squandered the
family’s possessions. Faced with destitution, the family sold 11-year-old Dora to the Yi
family." During her unhappy time there, she bore two daughters. Nonetheless, with
intelligence, diligence, and a strong will she taught herself to read and write, and even
read storybooks to her elderly mother-in-law. After years of meaningless and loveless
marriage, while the majority of her contemporaries remained in such circumstances
taking it as their fate, suffering and not knowing how to find love and meaning of their
lives, she fled to Jemulpo, where she met Ji Yun Kim and married him in 1891. A
woman deserting an arranged marriage and moving to a strange city was unheard of in
those days; in fact, it was illegal.100 But Dora’s choices spoke of her courage and strong
will to stand against tradition, despite the consequences. Thinking about the hard life of
her mother, Helen writes with sympathy and pride, and connects the mother’s sad life to
the lack of education that was deprived of her.
Mother had struggled all alone for her education... The Korean
language is easy to learn to read and write from the alphabet. An
eager and intelligent mind like mother’s was able to learn and
comprehend it without the assistance of a teacher. But mother’s father
was so violently against her learning to read that she had to hide her
text in his presence. She could study only after he had gone away.
Many times she was found studying and punished by him severely, but
she never gave up.101
"Jung Ok Kim, Imo Nim, Kim Whal Lan, My Aunt, Helen Kim (1977), pp. 24-27. I also had
a conversation in 1996 with Jung Ok Kirn, Helen’s niece who is a daughter of Ellen, her favorite sister.
l0°Under special circumstances, divorce was granted if requested by a man. The wife was
never allowed to ask for a divorce.
I0'lbid., p. 15. Also, Jung Ok Kim described her grandmother as a strong and intelligent
woman in our conversation in 1996.
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From this observation it is clear that Helen had high respect for her mother’s intelligence
and longing for education, which had not been fulfilled.
When Dora recounted her experiences to the relatives years later, young Helen
would weep along with her mother. So sensitive was she to her mother’s painful life that
Helen omitted references to it in her autobiography Grace Sufficient. While many knew
Dora’s story, Helen chose to bury it deep into her consciousness. Perhaps, Dora’s
survival and triumph over her difficult early life taught little Helen what was fair and
what was not to a woman, and bestowed upon her later a strength and determination to
work toward a particular cause: the emancipation of Korean women from the traditional
constraints through and with education that would not be limited to classroom instruction
but to any and all educative experiences, interactions, and relationships one could
develop from multiple institutions considering the fact that there were no formal schools
for girls. Despite the difficulties her mother had to face and solve, she had an enormous
courage and will to transform herself and thereby her children. Helen felt strongly that
her mother, an illiterate who taught literacy to herself later, was the first and the best
educator in her early life.
The influence of the mother on Helen’s life is clear and strong when one
examines the enduring effect of the early relationship between the two. On the other
hand, Helen’s disappointment with the male members of the family is not hidden. To
begin with, the grandfather, a drunkard and a gambler who had incurred such a debt to
the Yi family that he had to settle it by selling the daughter was beyond comprehension.
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92
He had opposed Dora’s learning the alphabet and punished her when caught studying all
alone. To Helen he was the embodiment of all the absurdities of the history, culture,
tradition, and habits of the era in terms of woman’s status and the treatment women
received. Her sentiment about this was clearly manifested in her article in a magazine,
criticizing men’s behavior, “What have you done for the betterment of our society? Why
do you spend money for pleasure seeking? Where did you get money to buy good
clothing, good shoes, gold trimmed glasses and gold-covered teeth?”102 When Helen was
only 14 years old in 1913, her father ordered her to quit school and marry as many other
girls of the time did. Helen was very upset: “Father did not understand the new position a
girl could take in Korea.. .Mother saw the struggle within me, the choice between the old
way of absolute obedience to father and the new way o f following one’s own conscience,
even in the case of a daughter.”103 Her disappointment in her grandfather and father
began in her early years.
Life-Changing Event: The Conversion to Christianity
The second most important event that took place in Helen’s early life was the
exposure to Western culture through Christianity. Once again, mother’s influence was
paramount because the acceptance of Christianity was slow throughout the populace,
only a small percentage of women converted and devoted their lives to preaching the new
faith and Dora Pak was one such woman and, in later years, Helen too came to epitomize
l02i'Shin Yoja" (New Woman), No. 4 (1920).
'"Kim, p. 28.
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this model.
Helen recounted her childhood in a family dedicated to their respective
religious observances: “Mother was very religious, always praying for the welfare of her
family and friends. My father showed his religion in a very different way. He was
primarily concerned with ancestral worship according to Confucian teachings.'’ Her
mother initially prayed to the Spirit of Welfare, the Spirit of Provision, and the Spirit of
Protection, forms of animistic nature worship intertwined with superstition, the earliest
indigenous religion of the Korean people, Shamanism. Helen remembered that her
mother kept small idols representing these Spirits in a chest or miniature earthen shrine.
As a child, Helen only joined in the rituals to assist her mother, who was faithful to but
fearful of these Spirits because she believed they could harm the family if an offering was
missed or overlooked.104
A turning point occurred in Helen’s young life in 1905, when she was six
years old. With the opening of Jemulpo to the West, Christian missionaries also
appeared, establishing hospitals and mission schools. The Neri Methodist Church in
Jemulpo was the first such settlement. Helen reflected on the influence o f the
missionaries on her mother:
A certain elderly lady, Mrs. Helen Kim, had been making frequent
calls on mother. She was a sweet and gentle person.... She and
mother developed a genuine friendship. Mrs. Kim was a visiting Bible
woman105 who assisted the pastor of the Christian Church. The pastor,
l04Ibid., pp. 7-10.
I05ln their work in foreign lands, missionaries urgently needed to obtain reliable and faithful
assistance from the native people since their language was less than satisfactory and their knowledge of
indigenous culture merely perfunctory. The so-called Bible women were recruited, received a few weeks’
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being a man, could not visit the women in their homes. As mother
became friendly with Mrs. Kim and heard from her about the Christian
message, she became an earnest seeker after the truths of the Christian
religion. She began to see for herself the difference between the spirits
she feared and the God that her friend believed to be her loving Father.
Mother never hesitated to change whenever she found a better way.
Being true to herself, she decided to embrace the Christian religion and
to leave the other spirits alone.106
Dora’s first steps in becoming a servant of the Christian God was to arrange
for the family’s baptisms and assign each member with a new Christian name. As Helen
wrote: “With baptism, mother and the younger children got new names. A new life
began with the new names, especially for the female folk who...were not important
enough to have their own personal names. Actually I had been given a name, but nothing
so good that I needed to keep it. So we were all given new names.”107 In this statement,
Helen was referring to the “nothing-so-good” name that was given to her based on the
signs of the Zodiac. Part of the baptism ritual involved burning all the idols; it was a
literal and symbolic rebirth according to Helen.
Dora’s conversion was to seek “love” for which she had a huge need. That
her search for love was philosophical, theological, or emotional is less significant than
the fact that after a few conversations with the Bible woman, she decided to convert to a
new religion. This explains her unhappy status and her need to change. She also knew
training about the Bible, and were sent out to villages on foot since convenient transportation did not exist
Their mission was to convert and sell Christian tracts to village women. While uneducated, these Bible
women were loyal assistants to the missionaries and remained undistracted by family obligations because
they were single.
06Kim,p. 10.
l07Helen’s mother was given the Christian name Dora at the time of her conversion; prior to
this time, she had no name. Helen’s name, also given at this time, came from the kind Bible woman, Mrs.
Helen Kim; previously, Helen was known as Ki Teuk. Ibid., p. 14.
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that the new religion would open opportunities for her daughters to get education. Even
if there was no school, she knew that the church activities would give her daughters
opportunities to mingle with others for a single purpose—to become a good educated
Christian. Because they would attend Sunday school and Bible classes, join the church
choir, and learn morals from the Bible and the preacher. For Dora, the whole experience
of conversion was broadening educative process for herself and her daughters.
However, the conversion of Dora created a problem to her husband who did
not mind Christianity nor the wife’s conversion but he wanted to continue the ancestor
worship in a Confucian tradition. They compromised that he continue memorial service
for his ancestors but not in an idolatry and superstitious manner. Helen liked the way the
parents came to a compromise because she had seen enough of her mother’s praying to
various gods and spirits with fear on her face. Although her father’s worship was
different from Dora’s practice, Helen liked the whole family going to church together in
clean clothes every Sunday and having a good time. For sheer lack of family outings,
especially with male members together, many converted families looked forward to
Sunday church going. Helen’s respect for her mother was enhanced in this instance again
because father followed her mother’s decision that brought the family together at the
church—an experience Helen enjoyed very much.
Neri Methodist Church welcomed both men and women, a ground-breaking
invitation that made the church open to both sexes; still, in deference to tradition, curtains
divided the church space into two sections, one for men and one for women. Helen loved
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to see the church full of men and women, boys and girls. The Bible was translated into
simple Korean, eliminating the challenging Chinese characters that only educated elite
men could understand. Dora could attend church with her children, read the Bible, listen
to sermons, and sing with the congregation. She joined with the other female members in
praying aloud and even crying to release their long-stifled spirits. The words of the Bible
gave their hearts courage to express themselves, and the church offered them a refuge, a
source of comfort and therapy, and a center for socialization and education. In her search
for a loving God to comfort her miserable upbringing, Dora was finding a world that
transcended the confines of her home. At the church, at the Bible class, and at the prayer
meetings, she found a new web of relationships that helped her to construct new
meanings in her life as well as in her daughters’. The reason for her conversion was fully
justified.
Following the conversion, Helen noticed that her mother had radically
changed; she was no longer fearful. “As far [back] as I can remember, ever since mother
became a Christian, there was a change in her general attitude toward life. I was too
young to know her inner transformation, but it was [also] on the outside; I could tell she
was different.”108 To a six-year-old, nothing could be more reassuring than seeing her
mother content, at peace, purposeful, and fulfilled with family life. Helen enjoyed
Sunday School, where she absorbed Bible stories and sang hymns with her classmates.
Helen’s new life was pure joy, since it drew on her talent for telling good stories and even
108Ibid., p. 12.
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broadened her social world: she was invited to the Mayor’s house to narrate a story she
had learned at Sunday School.
Encouraged by her mother and the fun experiences at the church, Helen grew
passionate about learning. Any subject found a welcome home in Helen’s mind. Dora
rejoiced in this “new day” when she sent all her daughters to school, as if through them
she was achieving her own dreams.
When mother heard about the possibility [of sending her daughters to
school], she was almost as happy as when she first heard about the
church. Mother had had to struggle for her own education....
Household skills were considered sufficient education for girls, who
were usually taught by their mothers in the home. But women like my
mother had a great yearning for education.... Some girls stole their
education, hiding behind the screen while their brothers were being
taught by hired teachers.109
It is the second time Helen expressed a certain displeasure about “the brothers” who got
their names customized by the professionals and “the brothers” who got education from
hired teachers both of which cost the poor family money but no dime was spent for the
girls. Even though she had felt discrimination of this kind, she never outwardly
complained to her parents knowing that her mother had had an even more difficult life
than herself, for which her mother always called Helen “a good girl.”
The concept of education for Dora and the other women o f her time, which
became Helen’s legacy, was not restricted to learning the alphabet and arithmetic because
there was no school where such an education would usually occur. Instead, they longed
l09Ibid., p. 15.
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for an education that would better one’s life by reading of other lands, learning of reality
outside their predestined sphere, climbing out of the pit into which they were bom. It
was the freedom of mind they were seeking to achieve to reflect, to make choices, and to
change their lives. Without education of this kind, the Korean women would have no
other solace or escape. It was not that they were after a degree or landing a good position
for a job. In essence, the most precious education for Dora was learning how to liberate
her expression, how to make choices, and to change her life in the process.
The dynamics o f family interaction influence the child’s perception of each
member and it is up to the child to pick and choose which member to emulate out of love,
respect, empathy, and comfort. In Helen’s life, it was Dora who provided her with all
these sentiments. None of them read children’s books to her but telling and listening
stories were always there and the main storyteller was again Dora. Nobody in the family
was authoritarian, although the father was an authoritarian figure in the form of the era,
but a good man, and none was a strict disciplinarian. Helen remembered being punished
only once by her mother who immediately felt remorseful for the whipping.110 This was
rather unusual then, Korean families did a lot of punishing children and no remorse was
shown.
Helen would always perceive her family as “progressive” for the time, citing
such examples as the entire family’s conversion to Christianity; the gift of her name
based on the Chinese zodiac sign despite being the unwelcome fifth daughter, sending
"“Ibid., pp. 21-22.
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daughters to school; and, ultimately, her own name inscribed on her father’s tombstone,
when female names were generally omitted.
Hence, the educational biography of Helen Kim begins in a progressive
family. With a newly converted mother and a baptism at the age of six in 1905, Helen
was catapulted beyond the boundaries of traditional Korean society through the education
of her mother. The irony (because the culture was geared for and by men) is that in many
families at that time fathers’ presence hardly mattered because many of them were
Confucian followers who did not bother with domestic chores and child rearing.
Thus, Helen’s earliest principal curriculum was by observing, patterning after,
getting praised by the central figure in her life, the mother Dora. She learned from her
mother values and attitudes—strong-wili, perseverance, determination to succeed, and
confidence to change—all for a goal she set to work for.
Formal Education (1907-1925)
In Helen’s early life, the educator was the mother. This is not to say that the
other members of the family, specifically male members, were not. Interestingly enough,
their influence instead, worked for Helen as a negative one, namely, men were not as
capable as women or they were lazier than women, all this assessment came from her
living, observing, and interacting with them, that helped her molding attitude and values
about women who, given equal opportunities, would become as capable as men, if not
better, in many areas of life’s tasks.
In 1907, the Kim family moved to the capital city of Seoul because the
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business of Helen’s father was failing, despite Dora’s efforts to supplement the income
by raising pigs and chickens in Jemulpo. Dora wanted to move to Seoul where work
would be more abundant, and they would be closer to their older daughters, Ellen and
Marion, who were already at the mission school, Ewha Hakdang. Even on the moving
day when the most help was needed, father remained behind to help out Helen’s oldest
brother, “[who] never made a living for himself or for his family on the farm.. .He
depended upon mother’s resourcefulness and industry to maintain..
11
Before moving to Seoul, in Jemulpo, Helen was attending Yong Wha Girls’
Primary School because she could easily walk to and from school, whereas Ellen and
Marion were too old to leave the house without their veil or ssu gae chima—a practice
that Dora despised. Prompted by her wish to abandon these feudalistic customs, Dora
had sent Ellen and Marion to Ewha Hakdang. During this time, Helen noticed that her
mother
always had a contented look on her face, and the light of joy in her
eyes gave [Helen] great encouragement. In her evening prayers she
would thank God for giving her daughters the privilege of learning,
which had been denied to her. Her prayers for her two daughters in
Ewha and for the one in Young Wha were always, ‘Father, help them
to become better servants of Thine than their mother could ever be. ’112
Clearly, Dora considered that this education, which had always eluded her, was the
critical vehicle for her girls to become servants of God and of the awakening nation.
Even within these transformations, Dora recognized that her oldest daughters
'"Ibid., p. 20.
1"ibid., p. 16.
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were already enmeshed in traditional customs and values, while Helen was at a ripe age
for turning in a new direction. Thus, Dora lavished particularly high expectations on
Helen.
Helen’s entrance to Ewha was natural—the manifestation of Dora’s dream—
and the transition for her was easy although Helen’s first night at Ewha for a girl of eight
years o f age was beset with loneliness and homesickness; however her faith in mother’s
decision was unwavering, “Mother left me in good hands, but that first night, sleeping in
strange surroundings and away from mother, I was painfully lonesome.”113
At Ewha, Helen excelled academically and socially. While occasionally
playful, she was usually attentive, obedient, and diligent, particularly in Religious
Education. Principal Lulu Frey took notice of her and awarded the bright and studious
Helen with a scholarship. At that time, Ewha was not the well-established institution of
today; it was, by turns, a church that strove to instill Christian values; a girls’ dormitory
where cooking, hygiene, and housekeeping were taught; and a school stressing English
and Bible Study. This experience, already profoundly influenced throughout her
childhood by her mother, nurtured in Helen a sense of self-confidence, competence, and a
solid position at Ewha. Actually, it mattered little if she learned highly scholastic
subjects to become an “educated” or “schooled” person. What mattered was the selfconfidence that was nurtured and stimulated in her early home life that in turn manifested
at school and led her to subsequent experiences at school with success.
m Ibid., p. 24.
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In 1913, Helen graduated with honors from the elementary and middle school.
When she mentioned her desire to go on to college, father’s emphatic “no” reminded her
that “he lapsed back into the old conservative world.” To him, Helen continues, “I was
already of marriageable age and going to school for five more years was unthinkable...
unless I obeyed him, he said, I was no longer his daughter or he my father.”114 This put
Helen in a deep dilemma because she did not want to hurt her father, at the same time,
“how could I stop going to school when I was just beginning to experience the enriching
influence of education?” Dora resolved the conflict by convincing her husband to allow
Helen one more year of preparatory school and college and encouraged Helen by saying,
“Go ahead with your studies. You are the youngest daughter, and there is no one after
you to be helped in marriage. If that is your teachers’ advice and you want it, there is no
reason why you shouldn’t go to college.”115 It was once again the mother, the important
“educationally significant other” who helped her. Helen’s emulation of her mother is
proved when she described as, “mother never hesitated to change whenever she found a
better way.” Helen showed no hesitation to forgo marriage, to disobey father although a
little guilty, and chose to go on studying which she thought a better way.
Turning Point
In 1914, however, as she entered high school, Helen underwent a crisis of
faith. She found a disturbing discrepancy between Christian theory, which she had
" 4Ibid., p. 27.
" 5Ibid., p. 28.
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absorbed so diligently in her studies, and the harsh realities of the world, now entering a
war of unspeakable proportions. She asked how Christian countries could wage such a
conflict in which innocent humans would be killed. Was it not the Christian spirit to
love, forgive, and help each other? Helen had taken these values to heart while watching
her mother’s conversion to Christianity and through seven years o f intense Christian
studies at Ewha, but now her values were being challenged.
Helen did not wish to disappoint her mother or her school, both of whom had
high expectations of her. However, she was passing through her rebellious adolescent
years while simultaneously observing and questioning the catastrophe of humanity
around her.
Through the years I had observed these religious practices but they
held no special meaning of significance for me. Without my realizing
it, my religion was a nominal acceptance of a set o f frozen dogmas and
was expressed in a routine of lifeless exercises.116
The faith, hitherto a core value in her life, began to waver, which provided an
occasion for her to take a good hard look at herself. She applied the peace-loving faith
and the concept of equality that she had learned from her religious classes and at church
seemed contradictory. Instead of accepting “a set of frozen dogmas.. .expressed in a
routine of lifeless exercises” she faced the challenge. This was an educative experience
to Helen.
" ‘Ibid., p. 29.
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To resolve this inner turmoil and examine her faith, Helen prayed alone in the
school chapel on many occasions. On one such night,
I asked God, if He existed, to reveal to me...that we were all sinners....
I struggled and prayed...all night long. Suddenly the illumination
came to me that my sins were pride, self-will, and hatred for the
Japanese.... This was followed by a remarkable vision. I seemed to
see Him take the three bags of my sins away, showing me what to do
the rest of my life. He pointed out to me a big dug-out moat where a
mass of Korean women were crying out for help with their hands
outstretched from the haze and confusion that covered them. The
whole vision was very real to me. This must have been what is usually
called a spiritual awakening. From that time on, my life has been
directed by God’s hand toward the one course of humble service to the
womanhood of my country and the emancipation of the women of the
world. I could ask of my religion no other reality than His presence
with me throughout life.117
Her awakening was as much an educative experience as a religious one: one
that intensified her personal humility and sensitivity to the condition of the masses of
Korean women. She was haunted by images of suffering women, much like her own
mother, who lived suffocating lives they knew not how to escape. With her personal
enlightenment, Helen affirmed a “new life” toward a “humble service to the womanhood
of my country.” Her experience breathed new vigor and energy into her studies, not only
of English and the Bible, but even Geometry and Geology, not her favorite subjects, for
suddenly everything resonated with purpose and direction. This is the educative
experience Dewey espoused: a previous experience added to the meaning of subsequent
" 7Ibid., pp. 29-30.
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experience. The linkage between the two produces an educative experience to an
individual regardless of where it has taken place.
It was not surprising that Helen graduated with honors from Ewha College in
March, 1918. Her commencement address was on ‘The Relation of Higher Education to
the Home.” For Helen, education served no purpose unless it was applied to bettering the
individual, the family, the nation, and ultimately, the world. For Helen, an education that
only acquired knowledge without practical application for a good cause, was a useless
education, and one that did not apply Christian teachings to real life was a dead one.
Media: Newspapers. Magazines
In the early 1920s, newspapers and magazines began to run editorials covering
issues for women and some by women themselves such as Helen Kim using vernacular
avoiding Chinese characters. Helen turned her attention to media after she graduated
from Ewha at her early twenties—mainly newspapers—and began writing newspaper
articles espousing civic and literacy education for women. Helen hoped to raise their
consciousness to undertake even the smallest effort at home. As a social reformer who
believed that education steeped in civic, moral, new ideas was the best tool to change for
better, she advocated education at the grassroots level; that is, in childhood in the home.
In order to ascertain that the home was conducive to supporting such
education, however, many of the destitute conditions of the majority of Korean families
had to be addressed. Helen championed the improvement of home conditions, everything
from hygiene to modest beautification to comfortable play-spaces for children. Her
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improvements were simple and practical. For example, to compensate for the lack of
modem plumbing, Helen appealed to women to simply upkeep their bathrooms. For
children’s play areas, she recommended a comfortable comer o f the house, not
necessarily filled with toys which most people could not afford, but with common,
practical items as pencils, paper, and scissors. Children could learn so much just from
pictures in magazines, singing folk songs, or planting a small garden in a flowerpot.
Helen urged the family to read together or, if the parents were illiterate, children could
read to them. To suggest that family members do educational or fun things together was
a radical idea, given the prevailing social lethargy caused by poverty, ignorance, and
oppressive traditions. Yet Helen persisted in her belief, even suggesting that men should
not be “stone-faced,” but rather more demonstrably loving and involved in raising their
children. This belief could have stemmed from her own reaction to her father’s
“absence” in her emotional life, particularly in not openly demonstrating care, support,
and love.118
Hand in hand with these subtle changes in the home came a more sweeping
plea for women to step out of their traditional roles. Helen remembered seeing the effect
of her own mother’s entrapment in a web of superstitions and archaic social policies. She
urged women to go to church, where they could meet their community members, hear
stories from around the world, and learn to read and write. From her own experiences,
Helen knew that church was not only a place for religious worship but an arena where
m DongA II Bo (daily newspaper), April 1921, No. 224.
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women could obtain information, comfort, and new ideas. She was in essence telling
them that school is not the only place for education and that education is not just learning
academic subjects. Also recalling flora’s chicken-and-hog enterprise to help her
husband, Helen proposed that women launch similar small businesses, for example,
raising chickens, selling eggs, or mending clothes. While it would certainly boost the
family income, the underlying benefit was instilling in women a renewed self-esteem, an
awareness of their own potential, and a modicum of independence based on their own
creativity and ingenuity."9 All these lessons came directly or indirectly from her mother,
which she had absorbed totally.
In a 1921 Dong A II Bo article,120Helen articulated the idea of the new era of
education as follows: “Individuals make up a family, families create a society, and a
society builds a nation. In order to have a civilized nation, individuals must become
civilized, then the families naturally become civilized, a society composed of civilized
families is to be enlightened, and the final consequence is a good nation.” To achieve
this grand goal, one needs an all-inclusive, encompassing education. She was less
concerned that education initially related to schooling per se, but more to changes that
would make existing customs and living conditions modem, efficient, and clean.
Because she insisted on building upon the established culture, she clearly showed how
proud she was of her heritage, while also demonstrating an awareness of all that seemed
119Dong A II Bo, January 2, 1935.
ll0DongA II Bo, 1921, No. 2, pp. 22-23.
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backward and stifling. Ewha women were already suspect to many Koreans at that time
because they were attending an institution with three nontraditional strikes against it: it
was not only a school, but one that was Christian and run by Western missionaries.
Helen, however, did not entertain the idea o f becoming a Westerner, she was a Christian
first and a nationalist second. Her motivation to work hard would always remain the
images o f “outstretched hands and the crying noise of the Korean masses of women” that
she had experienced in her “spiritual awakening.”
Nationalism
In 1910, the annexation of Korea to Japan was announced. A girl of eleven
years old felt bad about this news. She writes, “.. .we had no freedom even to weep when
we felt like it; and devotion for our country and our people.. .took deep roots within my
being. Continuing in our studies helped us to maintain steady nerves and high hopes for
the future.”121 One hears Helen’s voice regarding her patriotic fervor and her
determination to study harder because to her education was the most important and
urgent thing to acquire to fight back the enemy with.
In 1919, a nationwide independence movement ignited against Japan’s
colonialism, in part fueled by students across the country. Incipient feelings of hostility
reached as far back as 1905, when Korea became Japan’s protectorate and was
subsequently annexed by Japan in 1910. The missionaries, however, remained neutral in
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this conflict as they did not come to Korea to be involved in national politics, nor did they
wish to break their relationship with Japan. They focused on continuing their mission
work under these politically and socially turbulent circumstances, and on preventing their
churches and the Ewha campus from being used as political agencies.
Given the urgency of the independence movement, Korea needed as many
supportive participants as possible. This need required that notions of gender-based
inferiority be set aside at last. Many Korean women—educated and uneducated, urban
and rural, young and old—were given the opportunity to join in the movement, on the
same level as men. This widespread participation in street demonstrations, by men and
women from all walks of life, triggered a proud national will, even though it would
subsequently be subjugated to a brutal Japanese colonial administration. All activities by
the Koreans were crushed between March and December of 1919. The reports
announced by the Japanese authorities after the crush record 46,948 demonstrators
arrested, 7,509 killed, and 15,961 injured, while as many as 715 homes were burned or
destroyed, so were 47 churches and two schools.
179
Nevertheless, in this violent process,
the status of women and an indomitable sense o f nationalism gained momentum.
Although the Ewha missionary teachers forbade students to participate in the movement
for safety concerns, Ewha students and alumnae joined in the demonstrations, even
suffering arrest and imprisonment.
l22Ki-baik Lee, A New History o f Korea (Trans. Edward W. Wagner with Edward J. Shultz)
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 344.
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Helen was guilt-ridden over this event because she ultimately did not
participate in it. Although she advocated for nation building, she chose not to join the
street demonstrations for the all-important national independence movement with other
Ewha women. She was, however, involved in underground support for the movement by
collecting money from schools and church groups, and sending funds to secret overseas
organizations in Manchuria and Hawaii.
She felt particularly bad because her two closest friends, Induk Pahk (one of
the three women in this study) and Julia Syn, both Ewha teachers were arrested during
the demonstrations because the Japanese police suspected these teachers—and teachers in
general—to be leaders and organizers of the movement. Helen felt she had to go into
hiding for fear that her own health would not withstand the tortures in prison that were
sure to come. In the guise of a nanny, she hid at the home of a secretary of the British
Bible Society in a suburb o f Seoul. In later months, Helen could only apologize for her
choice: “Especially burdened was my heart as I kept hearing the news of my friends in
prison...the mental agony was almost unendurable...it seemed as though suffering in
prison with my friends would be light compared to my mental anguish because of the
physical comfort I was enjoying at the cost of their added tortures.”123
Troubled by the implications of her choice, Helen left hiding in January of
1920 and returned to Ewha. On campus again, she noted that
l23Kim, p. 44.
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Ill
The work program and the general situation at Ewha remained the
same, but we were not the same persons. We were no longer docile
and helpless people who accepted passively the injustices done to us.
We sought indirect ways of expressing our patriotism. We did
ordinary work with a new motive. We would do everything well
which would in the long run help us gain independence. Life and
work took on new meaning.124
In order to make up for the missed chance, when she emerged from hiding,
Helen organized an Ewha evangelistic band composed of seven members of Ewha women:
Esther Hong, Pauline Kim, Hannah Kim, Sungduk Youn, Sindo Kim, Aieun Kim, and
herself as leader. Their main goal was to reach as many small villages throughout the
country as possible to spread the good words of “Christian teaching and practice...ending
with a highly patriotic note.” This would help connect Christianity with the ideals of
human dignity and social justice, which they believed constituted the fundamental elements
of patriotism: “The welfare of the people, their health and education, their economic and
social betterment should be our supreme concern.”123 This message was not limited to an
evangelical cause, but was imbued with the enlightenment o f education. Helen firmly
believed that educated women must share what they had learned from others and from their
own experiences. Their agenda was a Christian faith intertwined with social change for
more equitable and “civilized” life—in essence, a religious-social crusade. This crusade
was “cultural nationalism,” which differed from the radical stance adopted by most people
I24Ibid.,p. 47.
'“ Ibid., p. 49.
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of that era. She had no doubt developed her approach partly as an effort to counteract her
personal non-involvement with the demonstrations.
Cultural Nationalism
The influence of cultural nationalism was spreading to a small segment of
young, Western-educated men and women during the 1920s. Their core philosophy was
that the nation should become modernized and the standard of living enhanced, not only
materially but also culturally. They believed that the power of pen was stronger than the
arms and weapons. Upon returning from the evangelical activity in the northern country
with six other Ewha women, Helen reconfirmed and reasserted that what Korean women
needed desperately was a basic education of literacy and improved and hygienic living
conditions. This time, her assertion was stronger and more real for she had seen it
herself. It was no longer a cry from an ivory tower.
Activities to elevate this standard were simple and practical: reading
newspapers, producing arts and crafts, and parent-child interactions such as playing or
singing together. Encouraging education through such affordable activities could be
achieved through conscious effort. The cultural nationalists sought to raise the
consciousness of the Korean people to absorb these pastimes into their lifestyle and
mindset, as a form o f living education. Through this chain of education, from individual
to family to community to society, Korea could be strengthened in culture and
education—the keys with which they could unshackle themselves from external
domination, colonialism, feudalism, and Confucian teaching. Women, particularly those
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at Ewha like Helen Kim, Induk Pahk, and others, found this idealized notion appealing
because it was neither militaristic nor political. The plan was a cultural aspiration to a
higher level of life, couched in Christian education.
Extracurricular Activities and Organizations
One important organization for Korean women was the YWCA, organized in
1922 by Helen Kim, Phillye Kim, and Kak-kyong Yu, all Ewha graduates patterning after
the already existing YMCA. In that year, Helen visited Peking, China, to attend the
Student Christian Federation Conference. Upon her return, numerous Christian women,
schoolteachers, and students banded together to organize the beginnings of the Korean
YWCA, “as though they had been waiting for such a call. They too had been groping for
ways and means to release their pent-up patriotism...the awakening...of women in
particular, with some concrete measures.”126
Initially, the principal activity of the YWCA was to convert as many Korean
women as possible to the Christian faith by publishing spiritual and religious messages,
lessons of the Bible, and prayer, and by holding meetings for religious talks. They were
also involved in the temperance movement, publicizing scientific evidence of the harm of
alcohol on the body noting the fact that a large majority o f Korean men drank heavily
because their social structure encouraged drinking cheap homemade alcohol that was
easily available. The YWCA was also instrumental in abolishing licensed and unlicensed
l26Ibid., p. 52.
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prostitution. In this sense, the Korean YWCA began to fulfill the goals o f Christian
religion, the women’s movement, cultural advancement, and enlightened education.
Helen did not believe the YWCA was a substitute for Ewha, but it could serve as an
educative institution where women outside the formal schooling system could benefit
from educational roles it played. Cremin’s “linkage” between the educative institutions
is definitely valid in this case, namely, the YWCA as one educative institution linked
with the families and the communities that it had served. Also, as Helen put it, the
original purpose of her involvement with YWCA was aimed at Christian religious work,
instead, unintended collateral education took place and affected many women’s lives.
In addition to YWCA she helped establish and nourish a number of women’s
organization such as Korean College Women’s Association, Housewives’ Club,
Professional Women’s Club with a faith that women in any society should play a role of a
heart that is central, core, and continuing as an important organ.
Studies Abroad
Upon the encouragement and recommendations o f her missionary teachers,
Helen was appointed to go to the U.S. for further studies. The goals of the missionaries
at Ewha was to train the native people to be leaders and pass the baton to Ewha graduates
to continue the school once the founding teachers leave. For this reason, the missionary
teachers identified strong students who seemed to be potential leaders, they urged and
supported young women to study in the United States and then return to Korea to teach at
their alma mater to accept their “inheritance” of social responsibility. They saw Helen as
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a student of great potential, Christian morals, and educational promise.
Helen’s “educationally significant others” included no chance encounters but
always people around her who knew her well and recognized her abilities as a potential
leader. In late 1922, Helen attended Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, to
study Religion, Philosophy, and English Literature. Two years later, she attended Boston
University to pursue a Master’s degree in Philosophy and Religion.
During these years in the U.S., Helen continued to attend numerous
international meetings and missionary conferences, where she also conducted fundraising
activities for Ewha. As early as 1923, she made a powerful appeal to the Woman’s
Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Jeannette Walter, a
teacher at Ewha and one of Helen’s mentors, presented Helen as a Korean “product of
higher education” while also appealing for more teachers at Ewha. Helen “won the
hearts of all” in attendance with her opening words:
I have always wanted to come here...to express [my gratitude for] what
you have done for the ten million women in Korea. You gave us light
when we were in darkness; you gave us life when we were dying....
You loved us and we have found the Light! Fifty years ago my mother
wanted to study but it was not the custom. She was punished for
trying to leam the alphabet.... We want to serve...we must serve! Two
hundred [Ewha women] in summertime go about teaching the glad
story to women, children and men...we do not exclude them. As I’ve
gone about in this land, so many universities, conservatories,
observatories, and laboratories, I’ve seen so many! I do not ask for all,
but can you not give to Korea just one?127
lz7The Executive Daily, General Executive Committee, Woman’s Foreign Missionary
Society, Methodist Episcopal Church, October 31,1923.
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In an accented but fluent English, Helen appealed to the good hearts of the missionaries.
Already known as a successful fundraiser for Ewha and a focused, ardent, and charming
individual, Helen was now becoming acknowledged as a true international goodwill
ambassador for her young nation.
In 1925, she returned home to assume the position as director of the Ewha
dormitories appointed by Dr. Alice Appenzeller, the sixth President of Ewha who
remained Helen’s significant mentor as a teacher, respected, admired, and emulated. As
the director of the dormitories, Helen instituted an autonomous management system that
enabled students to draw up their own budgets, do marketing, and plan menus and a
disciplinary committee to respond to any irregularities. Such experiences were vital for
these young students, Helen thought, since the Korean girls of the 1920 had been
sheltered at home and banned from participating in society at large; they were essentially
deprived of opportunities to function independently, especially in practical matters which
Helen had learned during her study years in the United States.
In 1930, Helen was once again sent to Teachers College, Columbia University
in New York for a doctoral degree. Her Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “Rural Education
for the Regeneration of Korea” (1931). Her premise was the existence of a true disparity
in Korea between the educational opportunities offered by urban and rural areas. This
problem was particularly exacerbated because the majority of the population lived in
rural areas: “Among those problems not in the least is that of educating the millions of
population in the villages, particularly the second generation, upon whose shoulders falls
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the burden of fulfilling the national ideals in spite o f the sudden throes of transition.’' 128
Her dissertation led to the inception of the influential New Village Movement that
encouraged Ewha students to visit rural areas during summer and winter vacations to
teach them what they knew and to leam from the rural folks about practical matters of
life. It had become a regular and organized school activity in the following decades.
Sending Helen to the United States for advanced degrees twice, assignment as
the director of the dorm, and in 1939 when Dr. Appenzeller, then the principal left Korea
during the war time, Helen became the acting principal of Ewha, at the behest of her
mentor, Dr. Appenzeller. Mentorship of this kind was the only way for Korean women to
get opportunities for further education and for entry into professional careers. The
relationship was personal and close. Helen respected her mentor, who was the first
Westem-bom child in Korea with an American missionary father. Helen learned from
her true democracy—respect for the opinions of others and open dialogue. From this
relationship, Helen learned that even the authority figure, whoever it happened to be—
parents, teachers, ministers—should respect the opinions of others, especially those in the
weaker position, without imposing orders. The surprising discovery in Helen’s mind was
that the highly “educated” principal, an American, and the almost “illiterate” mother of
hers, a Korean, had shared something in common, that is, “the values and morals,” in the
most profound sense.
l28Helen Kim, Rural Education fo r the Regeneration o f Korea, Teachers College, Columbia
University, New York (1931), from the Preface.
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Over the course of Helen’s life, one other woman proved to be very
significant: Jong Ai Lee, who was a student at Ewha a few years behind Helen. They led
separate but parallel lives until Lee divorced, another “new woman”, at which time she
moved into Helen’s home. A Registered Nurse trained in the United States, Lee became
Helen’s lifelong companion. While a lesbian relationship was not known to have existed
between them, their friendship was unbreakable and defined Helen’s sense of stability.
As Helen later wrote of Lee:
She saw my needs as a close friend, and during her free hours over
weekends she always came to help me run the house and make over
my old clothes.... After [Lee’s arrival] we shared joy and sorrow,
strength and weakness with each other, as good friends should.129
Their relationship, based on love, companionship, and devotion, lasted nearly 30 years,
until Lee’s death in 1954.
When Helen entered Ewha in 1908 and Principal Frey interviewed her, she
was afraid. She explains, “Partly it was because we were taught to stay away from our
superiors and elders out of respect, which was almost synonymous with fear.”130
However, when she became an accomplished teacher, acting Principal, director of
dormitories, the first woman Ph.D., and later the President of Ewha, she remained a
generous and personable woman who did not exude fear. She was gentle yet firm,
straightforward yet tactful in her style. A long time friend of Helen, Prof. Bong Soon Lee
who had been the director of Ewha libraries from 1954 to 1985 describes Helen, “as soft
lwIbid., pp. 91-92.
U0Ibid., p. 23.
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as willow, yet as firm as bamboo.”131
Helen was not an aggressive person who sought power for its own sake;
rather, her style was feminine, not feminist; educative, not didactic, and persuasive, not
dogmatic and her style always helped her accomplish what her mind set out to do. She
never perceived herself as physically attractive, but she had social successes that imbued
her with a large measure of confidence and “human” or “people” skills to accompany her
throughout life. Pauline Kim, one of the seven members of the Ewha evangelical group
told me that, “Once Helen set her mind to do something, small or big, she succeeded in
the end. She was talented, diligent, and above all knew how to move about among
people. That all contributed to her successes.”132 This would prove to be her educative
style, in which she continually behaved, moved, and combined her experiences to mold a
lifelong education for herself and others she would influence.
Wartime
By November 1940, Japan’s entry into World War II was imminent, and all
missionary personnel at Ewha went home to America. Helen assumed the temporary
presidency and felt tremendous pressure from the Japanese who demanded that the
Japanese language replace the now-forbidden English in the classroom. Christian
l3IWoo Wol Man Jip, Seoul, Ewha Woman’s University Press, 1979. Collection of Helen
Kim’s writings, edited by a committee of five Ewha professors, of whom Lee was one.
'“ Personal conversation, 1996, Seoul, Korea.
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education and practices were discouraged. They feared that Christian education would
only inspire Koreans to seek nationalism and independent thinking because o f its
“message” of equality between races, genders, and ages, the very value that had inspired
Helen’s mother a generation earlier, and the educated women could incite anti-colonialist
feelings among the people. Although she was accused by some of her contemporaries of
being pro-Japanese because she delivered a speech prepared by the Japanese, she argued
that her own writing would have been so stringently censored that her message would
never have been transmitted to her students. Even in a difficult situation, Helen was able
to seize on an idea, to determine what she wanted from it, and pursue it with vision for
the future.133
No sooner Ewha settled down after World War II than the Korean War broke
out in 1950. As a Christian, university president, women’s education leader, and
American friend, Helen was a prime candidate for a “legitimate” death at the hands of the
l33There was some controversy about Helen being “pro-Japan” during her reign at Ewha
between 1939 and 1945, when the missionaries, who did not wish to antagonize the Japanese nor be
involved in Korea’s internal politics, left during the difficult war years. This criticism came from a group
of people who wanted Helen to take a “revolutionary” and ultra-nationalistic stand against the colonialists.
Helen did say, however, that when Korean men were conscripted to fight in the battlefields, women should
prepare to receive their ashes without tears as the Japanese women would do; this meant that the fortitude
of Japanese women was a virtue to learn and emulate (Shin Se Dae, December, 1942).
Individual definitions of nationalism and/or anti-colonialism would clarify Helen’s position
during this period. Her remark reflected more of her style rather than a pro-Japanese stand. At the same
time, in August 1945, the U.S. Army Medical Corps asked Ewha to turn its campus into a military hospital
since it had a heating system, unlike the majority of buildings around i t Helen refused their request saying
that “Ewha is public property belonging to all Korean women and entrusted to me for a specific purpose.”
This position was to keep Ewha in Korean possession and for Korean women only. Even her critics praised
her for this strong, “gutsy” refusal of a request by the Americans, who were, after all, her friends and the
liberators of her country.
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Communist North Koreans who regarded her as corrupt and bourgeois. She had to flee to
a southern port city 300 miles from Seoul worrying about the 300 girls in the dormitory,
and how best to serve the country. She witnessed the enlisted young male soldiers, many
of whom were hungry, exhausted, and ill-prepared to fight. This was an eye-opening
encounter, for Helen had, to this point, only been focusing on her own disadvantaged
status as a Korean woman. She reflects,
For the first time in my life, I regretted not being a man who could turn
right around and go to the front to fight. Not being able to do that, I
resolved within my heart that I would do anything and everything I
could to help with the war... This determination burned within my
soul all during the war years. It is still burning...134
That a woman could join the armed forces was unheard of. Instead, Helen
redirected this sense of justice, duty, and love of the country into “fighting” for women’s
causes, an ongoing purpose o f her life. It was her wisdom that she did not engage herself
in the impossible battle but it also was her wisdom to select the battle that could be won
in order to achieve her goals for her fellow women. She received recognition from none
other than the Korean government and the President of Korea, Dr. Syngman Rhee for her
accomplishment in the field o f education.
Between 194S, when the Japanese withdrew, and 1948, when the lawful
Korean government was established, the American military took charge of Korea,
establishing law and order in this political vacuum. During this time, Helen served on the
Korean Advisory Committee on Education in conjunction with the American
l34Kim, p. 125.
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administration. Throughout her life, she enjoyed a close relationship with the United
States, both personally and professionally. She had only positive experiences, ranging
from her childhood encounter with the American missionaries at Jemulpo, to the Ewha
missionary teachers and her mentor, Dr. Alice Appenzeller, to her American graduate
studies, and now her colleagues in the American government. During these relationships,
Helen learned how to organize a large educational institution that was democratic in
practical as well as conceptual matters based on the education she had received from her
mentor Alice Appenzeller. Also during the Korean War, she was appointed to head the
Red Cross for a while and then as Head of the Office of Public Information to
disseminate accurate, minute-by-minute information to Korea and the United States.
In addition to serving in the government, Helen had attended numerous
international conferences. Her English was good; she was a “new woman”; she had an
advanced degree; she had a “people skill”; all these accomplishments were recognized
and praised.
In her professional career, she attended forty-two international conferences,
twenty-two of which were Christian meetings, fourteen addressing socio-political
concerns, and six with women’s organizations. At every meeting, she sought to introduce
all participants to her Korean culture, while she absorbed progressive ideas from foreign
lands.135
I35lbid.,p. 162.
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Professionalism with Personal Involvement
During the war, Helen began her work in a dilapidated but large family home
in Pusan, which she nicknamed “Victory House.” As the first order of business, she
proposed that a daily English-language newspaper be published to inform UN personnel,
officers of civilian aid agencies, foreign correspondents, and U.S. Aimed Forces. Despite
challenges that the ongoing war brought, she proudly produced the first Korea Times with
its “primitive look” in November 1950. Again, her faith in “small beginnings”, wellconceived in intention and process, would, despite obstacles, produce the desired results.
Her idea, almost obsessive, of getting started in a small and modest but just way was
learned from her Bible knowledge.
During the pandemonium of the war and refugee life, Helen never deserted
her principle that even from a negative experience, one could leam and turn it to an
educative one. A small museum was set up at Victory House, using old pottery and art
objects that fleeing refugees sold at a trifle in exchange for food. Helen’s companion,
Jong Ai Lee, ran the museum. Victory House was also used for many cultural activities
to entertain foreign personnel who otherwise saw little but war, devastation, and hunger
around them. In addition, modest but authentic Korean meals were prepared for these
guests and Ewha students staged music and dance performances. Thus, Victory House
became a multifaceted educative institution for all who sought it: museum, performance
site, conference room, chapel, a dining hall, and a home.
Another successful project of Helen and other staff members was a temporary
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campus o f Ewha in exile in 1951, realizing that the Korean War continued to rage
without a prospect of returning to Ewha’s Seoul campus any time soon. Tents and huts
were erected for 900 of the 1200 students enrolled in June 1950, at the time of the
dispersion. All of the students told tragic stories of deaths, family separations, and
poverty. Although no one had thought of setting up a provisionary school to continue the
educational momentum, Helen’s strong sense of vision, “with sorrow and sadness for the
lost one and with joy and gratitude for the living”136 launched what became known as the
“tent university.” A shack served as a chapel where the students and the teachers prayed
together for comfort and support in this difficult time and shared learning and teaching of
the life’s joy as well as its sadness. Helen’s vision was the Ewha remain a learning and
teaching institution not just producing “brains,” but “character” with “spiritual” growth at
heart.
After her retirement in 1961 by “passing the torch” to the next generation,
Helen lived in a small but comfortable home, “New House” near the Ewha campus as
President Emeritus. She passed her days peacefully practicing calligraphy with India ink
and brush. Her will reflected her personal contentment at the end of her life: she asked
not to have a funeral, but rather a small concert, with many songs and hymns of victory.
When she died in 1970, her wish was respectfully carried out by the entire Ewha
community.
136Ibid., p. 140.
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Woman of Two Cultures
Helen was caught between the two cultures—Korean and American. She had
to balance between the traditional values and norms and the new cultural agenda o f the
Protestant missionaries. In a changing world at a crossroad where the old culture
converged with the new, she was not afraid of learning the new. She had to go through a
gradual change so that the two different cultures converged with some aspects
overlapping and some others contradictory. She had the willingness to leam and to
reflect. She was growing into her life knowing and unknowing the familiar and the
strange. And until the end, her life experiences were neither static nor definitive.
In 1928, while en route to Jerusalem to attend the International Missionary
Council Meeting, Helen visited Marseilles in France and did an iconoclastic thing: she
cut her long hair, the traditional hair-do for hundreds o f years, very short. She worried
about her parents’ reaction for at that time, Korean offspring—young or old—required
their parents’ permission to cut off their hair since it was viewed as part of a legacy
received directly from one’s parents. This is a small example o f the dilemma whether
and/or how much old custom should be replaced by new ideas. Yet, as a positive symbol,
Helen’s new “bob” style mirrored the internal showing of ties to a restrictive past and the
acceptance o f a new lifestyle. And yet, throughout her professional life at Ewha, she
hardly chose to wear Westem-style dress although she complained at times about the
impractical national costume.
Helen’s education had taught the generation o f women that knowledge
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acquired from schools, church, and rural centers loses its purpose if it does not serve as a
medium for progress and change. To set a goal, one should begin with a small but sound
plan; she believed with a piece of small stone, one could in fact build a great building.
She repeatedly told her students and the general public that one good individual makes a
good family; one good family makes a good society; and one good society ultimately
makes a great nation. Then who was “one” and what was “good”? To Helen, “one” was
the Korean woman and “good” was the Christian faith.
Helen’s wisdom came from the history lessons she had learned as a female
child and as a female grown-up. In the society she had inherited, women’s voices were
not heard, much less “listened to” or understood. Therefore, Helen learned a great lesson
that one Korean woman’s small voice could be heard if it was uttered with insight, vision,
determination, and unbending Christian principles. She exemplified this belief as a rolemodel all of her life.
The underpinning drive to her boundless quest for knowledge was the
education o f Korean women, instilled in her as a child by her mother, Dora. From even
that early a time, she recognized and accepted her mission, as she described in the
conclusion of her autobiography:
In faith when I was a youth I accepted special responsibility for our
womanhood. In faith I have served all my life in whatever way I could
to bring freedom and enlightenment to our people. My faith has been
justified. In my lifelong experience of God’s grace I have always
found it to be just enough—in other words, sufficient. God has never
been extravagant, or stingy, in His constant bestowal of grace.137
I37lbid.,p. 199.
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At every encounter and through every experience, Helen Kim represented
herself as an Ewha woman, with all that such an identity embodied: a Korean, a patriot,
and a true servant o f God.
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Photograph 2. Induk Pahk (first row, second from left), with classmates, 1911.
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Chapter IV
INDUK PAHK (1896-1980)
Earlv Childhood Education (1896-19071
In the Foreword of her autobiography, September Monkey, Induk Pahk wrote:
My object in writing this book has been first to witness what can
happen in a life when the power of God grips a heart, mind, and soul.
My mother was a village woman bom in the days when the weighty
traditions and conventions accumulated throughout the centuries had
become especially burdensome. Christianity acted as a lever and
fulcrum to dislodge her from the stony soil of the past and to lift her
above tragedy, fear, and superstition. It also brought the living water
that made the soil fertile again. And in this new soil I was rooted and
nourished.138
Through her words, we hear Pahk’s clear condemnation of the traditional life that her
mother, and the majority of Korean women of that generation, was compelled to endure.
Rather than bitterness over the social condition, however, Pahk recognized how the
newly imported Christianity became the channel for her mother—and ultimately
herself—to direct her energy and growth, or re-growth. To the three causes—liberating
women from the traditional conditions of life that had been biased against women;
l38Induk Pahk, September Monkey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 19S4), Foreword.
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promoting the Christian faith she had adopted with love; and building a nation with
women’s participation—Pahk would devote her entire life.
Earlv Years
Bom in September 1896, in a small village of Monyangtul, three miles west of
Jin Nam Po,139 North Korea, Induk Pahk was the fourth child of a family headed by an
illiterate Buddhist mother (Kim On Yu) and a scholarly Confucian father (Pahk Young
Ha). The Pahk family had lost three male babies and, thus, the birth of a girl as the fourth
child was a keen disappointment. Without a boy, the family line could not be continued
to worship the ancestors and inherit the family property. Having lost three babies, the
father’s ultimate reaction was relatively positive: “Well, she is better than nothing. The
main question is whether or not she will live!”140
Like many women of that time, the name perfunctorily given to this girl
reflected both gender discrimination and low expectations of the role that women were
expected to play in society as merely pretty, prim, meek, virtuous—and mainly
unimportant—creatures. Boys’ names, on the other hand, suggested qualities of heroism,
power, success, and strength. At birth, the duties, achievements, and even personal
character of a child (generally male) were prescribed by the choice of a name. For
example, Yong Ha, the name of Induk’s father, means “eternal stream,” whereas her
139 One of the first harbors in the northwest area of Korea that was open to foreign trade and
commerce.
140Pahk, p. 13.
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mother’s name, On Yu, means “meek.”141 The purpose of Induk’s painstaking
explanation of names in her autobiography will become clearer as her unusual childhood
experiences are narrated in this chapter.
Although the baby was only a girl, her father, a scholar in Chinese classics,
was able to discern her future by examining the birth time, day, and year using the
Chinese horoscope. He saw that this baby girl had great potential to achieve and lead an
extraordinary life. On the other hand, the mother accepted that her daughter, bom in the
Year of the Monkey, would simply evidence the cleverness of that animal and little else.
In 1902, when Pahk was six years old, a baby brother was born, to the
family’s delight, but both he and the father succumbed to an epidemic of cholera that
swept the village that year. “The Pahk family alone lost six immediate relatives...
[including uncles and cousins]. Great devotion was displayed by the women at this
crucial time, my aunt having cut off the tip of her left ring finger in order to drop her
lifeblood into the mouth o f her dying husband.”142
Because Pahk’s mother could not, by law, inherit the property her husband
left, the relatives, led by a great-uncle, decided to choose who would become the male
l4lInduk’s comment in retrospect about her mother’s name was humorous: “No doubt my
maternal grandparents hoped to imbue their daughter with a quality which her animal signs did not portend,
since Mother’s nature was anything but meek” (p. 16). The animal signs, again, refers to the old custom of
naming children after the Zodiac signs of their birth.
l42Pahk, p. 16. When I was a little girl, my mother’s cousin, who was an elderly woman,
often visited our home. I was scared to see her cut-off left ring finger where a wedding band would be
worn nowadays. For a long time I did not stay close to her. One day I asked my mother who explained
that her cousin had had to cut her finger off to give blood by mouth to her dying husband. It was not meant
to be a symbolic gesture to give the last gift, but rather in earnest belief that it would cure the dying patient
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heir. “We have chosen a boy from the family of the nearest relative to be the heir of the
deceased. Take him as your son and heir.” The lack o f legal protection for the helpless
widow meant that she would be “subservient to the new-chosen heir and that behind him
would be his father acting as regent to our family.”143 However unfair, the dire situation
o f Induk’s childhood and many others was filled with poverty, disease, and hunger and
quite common, especially in the case where a father passed away leaving families
unprotected. What was significant in Induk’s life was the fact that she was the only
surviving child o f a mother who had unusual qualities—strong will, no fear, humor, and
hope. These qualities allowed the daughter to get education to prepare for the future that
lifted them up from the impossible conditions in which they lived.
Conversion to Christianity
At this very moment of the mother’s anxiety and desperation, her cousin came
forth to comfort her with life-changing words. The cousin, a Christian, encouraged her to
find her way out of this restrictive situation, to which she reacted, “Where is it? Tell me
quickly, I am ready to leave at any time. I have lost all. There is nothing more to lose
and everything to gain if I can only find my way.” A cry from a desperate woman,
indeed, not because she was less than intelligent or emotionally unstable but because the
society did not protect her own right as a citizen, as a woman, as a widow, and as a
mother. The cousin gently told her, “Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. If
l43Pahk, p. 17.
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you follow him, he will take you into a new life, for his Father—our Father—God, the
Father, is love.”144
Inspired by her cousin’s suggestions to follow this ‘Tather of love,” Mrs. Pahk
admitted that she had never felt love from Buddha, even though she had been a Buddhist all
of her life. This new idea o f love felt reassuring, nurturing, and hopeful to her, after years
of being controlled and treated as insignificant. In addition, the cousin also suggested that
Induk could take care of her as well as any son could, if given an education. Mrs. Pahk
found this concept alluring and regarded her newfound independence, without husband or
son or money, as a portal to controlling her own life for the first time. She could now
willingly decide to convert to Christianity and locate educational opportunities for her
daughter. While the former was easy because a few Christian churches were available in
her area, the latter search for a school proved more difficult.
Taking the cousin’s suggestions to heart, the grieving mother and small child
walked three miles through the snow on Christmas Day to join a church congregation.
Induk recalled that day vividly:
We walked down the snowy desolate road, a lonely, heartbroken
village woman holding a little girl by the hand, seeking the new way of
life. I still remember that my mother wore the white of mourning (8:
For funeral, especially the family members wear white/beige linen
overalls for three years and straw shoes which can be worn only for
the funeral)—long trousers and short jacket,... while I wore long black
trousers, pink skirt, and yellow blouse all padded in winter fashion.
On our feet were straw shoes.... When we arrived at the church a
handful of native converts were singing songs. I thought the singing
was very beautiful. As the service went on, my mother was comforted
,44Ibid.,p. 17.
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and reassured by the simple message about the Christ Child who came
to save the people from their sins and mistakes and to help them live
their days in service, love, and joy.145
How warm it must have felt both physically after walking three miles in the
snow with straw shoes and emotionally listening to beautiful singing of hymns and
carols. The comfort given by the heated church was good enough, and solemn and joyful
singing must have been an uplifting experience since they were looking for solace of
some kind. I can only imagine.
Formally uneducated but naturally intelligent, Mrs. Pahk found herself
gravitating instantly to the welcome message and beautiful environment o f the church.
More joyous than she expected it to be, Mrs. Pahk was elated with “the vision o f her little
girl learning to read and write just like a boy.” About the Christmas present the church
had given Induk, “the most unforgettable thing was a No. 2 yellow pencil and a yellow
writing pad put into my hand as a Christmas present. It was intended for a boy, but the
gifts of handkerchiefs for the girls ran out when it came to my turn. So the lady handed
over to me one leftover boy’s present, the pencil and pad.” 146 Mrs. Pahk enthusiastically
reminded her daughter not to waste the pad and the pencil but use them to leam how to
read and write. What really made Mrs. Pahk choose the new life was a change that was
promised to her and hope that change would provide her little daughter with education
that would allow them to surmount the difficulties they faced.
I45Ibid.,p. 18.
I46lnduk Pahk, The Cock Still Crows (New York: Vantage Press, 1977), p. 8.
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Still buoyed by this transforming experience, Mrs. Pahk undertook a serious
plan the following day to find a tutor who could teach her daughter the basic Korean
phonetic alphabet, since she was unable to do so herself. While she wished to provide
Induk with a formal education, the mission schools that were available for girls were
some distance away, and the lack of money and transportation posed difficult obstacles at
the moment. Simultaneously, Mrs. Pahk’s “rebellion” was sharply criticized by her
relatives. They were shocked and dismayed that she would go to church and mingle with
strangers—including men. They were aghast that she refused to accept her life under the
new heir selected by her relatives.
A-NsyJLifg
Mrs. Pahk chose a difficult road. Perhaps, she would have been quite
comfortable with the trickling down money (her own money theoretically) managed by a
male relative. She valiantly ignored their recriminations and chose to leave the village
and live at her younger brother’s home. As Induk reflected: “All the earthly possessions
mother had were the fifteen dollars, a bundle of clothing, and me with the yellow pad and
pencil. Looking into the future...she started out for her new life.”147 She was abandoning
a reality that provided no options, and accepting a new reality, hopefully filled with
choices for personal development and growth for the daughter and herself.
M7Pahk, September Monkey, p. 22.
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Mother and daughter trekked seven miles o f countryside to reach Sanmock
where Mrs. Pahk’s widowed brother, Kim Yong Ho, lived with his two little daughters.
When she told her brother of her two decisive revolutions—accepting Christianity and
educating her daughter, he too complained and criticized her. But Mrs. Pahk had become
strengthened with resolve on her journey to a new life, and even the railings of a
drunkard brother could not deflect her from her vision. All the criticisms she received
did not defeat her, the injustice she saw around made her indignant, she became more
determined and strong to go ahead with her plans and she never lost hope for her
daughter. However harsh realities discouraged Mrs. Pahk, she had a legacy to pass on to
her daughter.
What did all this mean to a young and only girl-child? How did her mother’s
strong will and resolve influence Induk at such an impressionable time? Mrs. Pahk was
the sole and central figure in Induk’s formative years—mother, breadwinner, teacher,
friend, and minister. Thus, when Mrs. Pahk conceived o f an unusual plan to insure
Induk’s education, her child willingly followed along. In 1903, Mrs. Pahk disguised her
seven-year-old daughter as a boy in order to send her to a nearby boys’ school in
Dukdong. Her distant relative, Kim Sung No, headed this small learning facility for
boys, and there was no other educational option around for girls. Mrs. Pahk told herself
many times her Christian cousin’s encouraging words, “Even a girl, once educated, could
take the place of a son,” and so sent her daughter forth in the costume of an acceptable
student of the time—a boy. As Induk described, “Dressing me in a boy’s pink jacket and
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a pair of black trousers made out o f her skirt, and changing my red ribbon to a black
ribbon braided and tied into the hair just as all other little village boys wore their hair, she
made me look like the boys with whom I would go to school.”148 Certainly she had no
wish to transform or replace her daughter by a real boy, but her actions were spawned by
her belief that an intelligent and diligent child, although a daughter, could do all that a
son was expected to accomplish in life given the opportunity for education.
Most significantly, Mrs. Pahk changed her daughter’s name. Originally, her
father had given her the female name of “Imduk”; her mother now changed it to a
masculine form, “Induk,” meaning benevolence and virtue. This, along with her
appropriate attire, would assure her admission to a boys’ school. Induk recalled the
transforming moment:
Taking her new girl-son by the hand, mother led me to the one-room
village school and said, ‘You are my son now. Remember your name.
If you have been a good boy at school, I will give you all the chicken
gizzards you want when you come home.’... Knowing how much I
enjoyed gizzards, she had regretted many times that when my brother
was living, she had given him all the gizzards. Now she would make
amends.19
Faced with a new identity, a new responsibility not to divulge her “secret,”
and a new name which was now imbued with traditionally masculine qualities, sevenyear-old Induk entered a classroom in which fifteen boys, ages six to ten, were engaged
l48Ibid„ pp. 24-25.
,49Ibid„ p. 25. Chicken gizzards were known to be nutritious foods (long before cholesterol
came to haunt people) that went to male members of the family. In addition, poverty prevented people
from buying chicken often. Even after many decades from Induk’s childhood, in my own family, gizzards
went to my father and the brothers, too.
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in reading Chinese characters. “They all stared at me as the teacher called me to sit.. .and
gave me a book entitled “One Thousand Characters.” From this book I was to learn the
first eight characters that first day. Instead of eight, I learned sixteen.”150 It was a small
booklet that contained the basic elementary Chinese characters every schoolboy had to
memorize. The classroom was the teacher’s home, and school tuition was paid in rice
and wood, which was used as fuel. Induk proved to be a quick learner, and so was her
mother. While Induk was learning the Chinese characters in the classroom, Mrs. Pahk
was teaching herself how to read and write the Korean alphabet (en mun),[Sl while also
weaving cloth, raising silkworms, and spinning thread for a living. If the boys failed to
recite or write the characters correctly, the teacher would whip them across the legs with
his handy sticks. Induk, however, was never punished; in fact, she was rewarded with
prize after prize for her excellent recitations and motivation. If the teacher assigned ten
Chinese characters for homework, Induk would memorize twenty. She surpassed all her
male counterparts in academic work as well as extracurricular activities, and would climb
trees, spin tops, and skate on the frozen pond with the rest of them. She only refrained
from participating in swimming, for fear of having her true gender discovered.
l50Pahk, September Monkey, p. 25.
IS1A simplified Korean vernacular designed for women who were regarded lower than and
inferior to men.
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Family Stories
Induk’s willingness and self-motivation to excel may have sprung from many
sources, especially the constant vigilance she had to maintain to hold her own among her
masculine competition, as well as to uphold her mother’s expectations and the sacrifices
she made on her behalf.
For lack of transportation mother and daughter walked miles and miles to get
to places. In those occasions, mother told Induk many stories only to entertain the tired
daughter. Some stories touched the little girl and some others gave her motivation to do
well in her studies. One story that was stuck in her heart was about her paternal
grandmother, an illiterate woman, who would pray to her god for her son’s (Induk’s
father’s) education so that he could pass the national examination and assume a
governmental position that offered him power, wealth, and status. She would purposely
sit and pray facing in the direction of the capital city Seoul where the examination would
take place—two hundred miles south of where she lived—to guide her positive thoughts
toward the seat of the national examination! Through such stories, however, Induk
absorbed the underlying messages that education was vital for success and respect in
society—even if it was intended only for men, and that prayer was a source o f strength
and power to achieve one’s goals—even if it was couched in superstitious behavior, and
that mothers’ desire for children’s success knew no boundary—even if the wish for
success had an ulterior motivation for a relatively comfortable life in their old age.
Supplementing her grandmother’s tale was her own mother’s childhood
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experience of questioning the “reality” o f her existence: “From her girlhood, [mother]
had asked why she could not leam as her brothers did, why a woman had no property
rights since she could produce as well as a man, and why her sex was treated unfairly.”132
Armed with these questions, Induk approached her studies with unparalleled
determination and an unflinching direction toward a future that would somehow tackle
these issues and seek their resolution.
Mother’s Resolve
Mrs. Pahk had learned from her church sources of the Samsung Methodist
Mission School for Girls in Jim Nam Po, seven miles from the boys’ school Induk was
currently attending. Although distance and transportation remained problems, the mother
was newly determined to move her daughter to the mission school where she could be
herself—a girl—and be filled with education and the message of Christianity. As Induk
settled in at Samsung, her mother undertook many menial jobs to earn her living in a
nearby village. As Induk described in her writing:
After establishing me in school, Mother prepared a bundle of silk cloth
for making children’s jackets, buttons.. .hair ribbons, coin purses and
such. She carried this heavy burden on her back and visited from
house to house.... She covered an area of about twenty miles west of
Jin Nam Po.... as my mother sat and rested on some hilltop
overlooking the clustered homes, she always prayed, ‘Dear God, lead
me into the homes where I can sell, for the sake of my little girl.’
Sometimes she wept as she prayed. Not always able to sell, she often
wept for disappointment but also because she felt that her daughter
was just as important as somebody else’s ten sons.153
l52Pahk, September Monkey, p. 34.
,33Ibid„ pp. 35-36.
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At one time in order to find a room and board, Mrs. Pahk worked as a live-in
maid with Induk for a concubine of a high official for a short period time but quit for the
reason that the concubine ate the freshly cooked rice and dishes first while she and her
daughter had to eat the leftovers. She thought that her young daughter should eat freshly
cooked rice too and moved out of the concubine’s house and settled in a small room and
gave a pot and rudimentary plates to Induk and taught her how to make rice. Mother
taught her the basic skills of surviving.
One day, Induk decided to cut school and surprise her lonely mother with a
visit, but was startled by her rebuff and stem words: “I am doing my best to provide for
you and you must do your part by applying yourself to your studies.” This was a lesson
to teach independence and responsibility. Hardships of this sort and companionship in
difficult times taught Induk lasting feelings of sympathy, loyalty, and gratitude. Mother’s
constant attention to the daughter and the daughter’s growing attachment, not
dependency, and understanding for the mother worked for both of them in an effort to
pursue an education because that was what they wanted and they reinforced each other.
In fact, Induk’s first twelve years of life when she left mother to go to Ewha were spent
exclusively with mother since there was no family to speak of except for the two women.
At Samsung, Induk befriended a girl, Yun Sim Sung, who had attended Ewha
a few years earlier but the school considered her to be too young. Now, a few years later,
Yun wanted to return to Ewha and invited Induk to join her on the trip. “If you have
money enough for transportation, just come along with me. We can walk to Pyong Yang
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[a distance of about 40 miles] and take a train from there to Seoul [166 miles]. If you
have three won [$1.50] for travel, it will be enough.” Her mother barely hesitated in
granting Induk permission to visit the famous school. “I still have the fifteen dollars
given me by the Pahk family,” Mrs. Pahk said. “Because I believe in tithing, I will give
you a tenth of that money for transportation. It will be producing for God, because you
want so much to get a higher education.”134
Formal Education (1908-19181 at Ewha
In 1908, at the age of twelve, Induk experienced a journey o f “firsts.” She set
out with Yun and her father to visit the capital city of Seoul for the first time, and became
acquainted with Ewha. It was also the first time Induk saw electric lights, what must
have been quite a spectacle for the impressionable child as the train pulled in to the dusky
station. Compared to the village setting of her childhood, this metropolitan kaleidoscope
o f sensory experiences accompanied her through “the capital city, center o f learning and
culture”—although her eyes and her keen desire for “learning” and “culture” magnified
the less-sophisticated reality of the city. Induk rode on a rickshaw for the first time up to
the “gate of a huge two-story red brick building which housed the Ewha High School.”
As Induk reminisced, “In those years, there were very few two-story structures and I was
delighted by my first experience of climbing stairs in an interior.” In a while, “we lay
down to rest.. .the lights suddenly went out. I was greatly puzzled.... My curiosity
l54Ibid., pp. 41-42.
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soared again and I determined to leant more about electric lights. Very tired and so very
lonely for my other, I wanted to cry into my pillow but remembered Mother’s saying,
“You are my son. Be brave!”155 This may as well have been the first time that Induk
could assimilate the paradoxical message her mother was giving her. This twelve-yearold curious girl would have to be as strong as a boy, earn all that a man was expected to
receive and attain in his life, and yet balance the reality of her womanhood in the same
picture. How she would accomplish this awesome duality in a traditional society would
hopefully be revealed to her through an education and a religion that willingly embraced
the whole person.
The next morning, Induk was interviewed by the principal of Ewha, Miss Lulu
E. Frey who asked her, “Do you have money to pay?” To Induk, Ewha was a place
where impoverished girls could attend. She simply answered, “It was because I had little
money that I came to Ewha. And if I were willing to go home I would not have come in
the first place. Here is the only place where I can get an education.”156 Remembering
her mother’s feisty manner of indignation and resolve when faced with a difficult
situation, she also explained to Miss Frey how her mother had succeeded in getting her
into schools thus far. For three days, a battle of wills ensued between the principal and
the twelve-year-old, with the former questioning the girl’s motives for attending and the
girl maintaining her firm desire to be educated. In the end, the principal yielded to the
l55Ibid., p. 45.
I56lbid., p. 46.
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stubborn, bright girl, and permitted her to stay. As much as Induk was curious about
what her life would be in this formal educational institution, Miss Frey must have been
equally curious to see what would come from such a determined girl who could talk to
the principal about a free education for poor girls. By then, however, already 24 years
had passed since the opening of the “living room school” in 1886, and students were
paying small tuition fees. The confidence Induk displayed during her argument intrigued
Miss Frey, who perhaps felt that her personality, her flowing facility with language, her
self-assurance, and her need for a friend indicated promise o f accomplishing anything
this little girl set her mind to do. Her mother’s teaching up to this point substantiated the
principal Frey’s decision to admit her to the school.
Saturdays at Ewha were not school days. This was a direct American
influence because in Korea then, as it is now, Saturdays are considered work and school
days with at least a half-day of work. Ewha girls, however, used their Saturdays to do
washing, sewing, and ironing—a radical new method to press their clothes instead of the
traditional “beating.” The girls began to enjoy material comforts, courtesy of the
American missionaries, including the luxury of a weekly bath. Sundays, of course, were
devoted to church-going and Sunday School activities. The girls enjoyed attending
church because they found it to be a wonderful “outing,” not only for religious services
but for socializing. After all, they were all young girls who also enjoyed the Sunday
special, “a bun filled with sweetened bean pulp.”
The curriculum consisted of English, Bible Study, Chinese Classics, Math,
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Hygiene, and Chorus. Since Induk had an innate singing talent, she and her classmates
formed the first women’s quartet in Korea. In fact, Induk composed music and wrote
lyrics for Ewha in 1918 (see Chapter II). In gym class, she learned the spirit o f teamwork
and sportsmanship, as well as how to lose a sport competition graciously. Public
speaking and debating events on topics, “Is it necessary for women to have higher
education?” “Which is more important, physical power or spiritual power?” enforced
self-confidence in the girls, which was an important educative experience as they had
long been asked to remain silent and submissive. It was significant on two fronts—one
was the exercise to speak out their opinions and another was a bigger issue that
challenged the traditional value for women to be quiet, submissive, suppressed, and
repressed. The girls were encouraged to open up to a new democratic way of thinking,
self-expression, and living, and they were quick to volunteer themselves in any
opportunity that so indulged them.
The humane nature of the missionaries came through most profoundly during
an incident in Induk’s first year of high school. Their teaching may have helped Induk
develop a more systematic and organized view of herself and the world around her. The
incident in point was that a severe flood devastated many Korean lives, and Induk led a
group of students into discussing ways to help the flood victims. They chose to forego
eating prohibitively-expensive meat on Fridays (once a week treat), and send the money
instead to the needy. Miss Frey was touched by the students’ kindheartedness and
donated the money to the flood victims, while serving meat dinners on alternate Fridays.
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Induk read deeply into Miss Frey’s charitable decision:
At that time we were not even aware how much more we learned from
what our teachers were than from what they taught...the big thing
about the missionaries has been the fact that they have trained [our]
hearts along with their disciplined minds. The combination has made
a deep impression on Korean young people in a period of transition.157
In 1909, Miss Frey had withstood bitter opposition from parents who wanted
to educate more girls rather than to create the college level class for a few selected
students, and initiated her plan with only three girls. As a result, Ewha College became
the first women’s college in Korea founded by the Methodist Board of Foreign Missions.
For Induk, this school became “the lighthouse in the life of the Korean people [women],
shining in the dark and tempestuous days which lay ahead’*138because she was an
ambitious and able student who wanted to accomplish as much as she could, maximizing
her potentials that included singing, debating, and social work for the poor and needy. In
her time, so few female students attended the college that often the class was comprised
only of one student and one teacher. When she graduated from college in 1918, she was
the only member of her class. While such one-on-one collaboration is advocated today,
Induk considered it a sad commentary on the paucity of girls who could or wished to
attend college. The level of education Induk received at Ewha in the early 1900s was not
academically challenging but the experiences she acquired, such as charity activities,
organizing and leading a choir group, and peer debates, energized her to confront any
I57Ibid., p. 51.
I5*lbid., p. 54.
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obstacles that lay before her with skill and dispatch. Induk’s constant Bible reading,
praying, and reflecting all would serve to brake her natural tendency to act quickly,
impulsively, and emotionally to solve a problem. According to her colleagues at Ewha,
she was a happy, outgoing, and outspoken woman.159
Imprisonment
By 1919, Induk had become a teacher at Ewha, instructing math, gym, and
music. As the March 1st independence movement burgeoned, Induk chose to participate
in it, against warnings from the missionaries who sought to protect all Ewha girls from
potential danger. She wished, however, to show her resolve in an outward, daring
manner—a style learned from her mother who had even gone to the extent of disguising
her daughter as a son for the purpose of being able to attend a boys’ school. Her actions
had severe repercussions: on March 10, nine days after the initial nonviolent protest,
Induk was summoned to the principal’s office. Awaiting her were two policemen—one
Korean, one Japanese. They tied Induk’s hands with rope and hauled her off to jail, as
Miss Frey pleaded futilely for her release.
At the detention center, Induk witnessed the torture o f several Ewha girls.
The police accused Induk of inciting the students to demonstrate, to which she replied:
“Although I am their teacher, I cannot prevent them from taking part in what is right and
I do not feel that I am responsible for their conduct.’’160 Induk never showed fear nor was
IS9In 1996,1 had a conversation with Professor Kap Soon Kim, a long-time English professor
at Ewha, a graduate of Ewha’s class of 1935, a new woman herself.
'“ Ibid., p. 60.
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she intimidated; rather, she talked back in a straightforward and direct manner. She also
trusted the students’ independence and ability to make a choice what was right and
wrong. The next morning, Induk was brought to the West Gate Prison, tagged with
prisoner number 2221, assigned cell number 6, and placed in solitary confinement.161
Miss Frey managed to send her warm food and a Bible, which Induk read repeatedly
from cover to cover. She found that her faith anchored her during these unjust
circumstances.
After several months in solitary, she was released in July of 1919. “Freedom
at last! To me, or to anyone else, certainly freedom—physical, mental, and spiritual—is
one’s most precious possession.”162 The incident gave Induk confidence and freedom to
think and act for herself by joining a political demonstration—even at the risk of
imprisonment—and linking with the dominant male group for the common cause of
building a nation. She succeeded in stepping out o f the female sphere of domestic
matters and walking toward the goal of achieving equality between the two genders by
taking up the common cause for independence of the nation.
Induk, along with her students and colleagues at Ewha, fervently believed that
their newly acquired religion provided them with this precious freedom. She transferred
her learning to the cause of building a strong Korea. Her sense of nationalism was
equally derived from her mother, who believed that once an individual lives by the words
161Ibid., p. 61.
'"Ibid., pp. 69-70.
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o f the Bible, society would in turn become good, moral, and equal, thereby making the
whole nation strong and just. Both mother’s and Induk’s sense of justice was totally
based on and originated horn their faith in the new religion.
Vocational and Lifelong Education 11918-19751
By now, she had established herself at Ewha as a solid teacher with high
morals and a bent for political activism. Recognized and admired by the teachers who
had taught her and by the students whom she was teaching, there was compatibility and
sharing of values between themselves. If this served as example of learning and teaching,
transmitting knowledge and values to the following generation, she did just that.
Marriage
Soon after her release from prison, Induk, now 22 years old, was invited by
Kim Young Sook, a student in her class, to have dinner at her house. There, she met the
girl’s brother, Woon Ho, whom she instantly liked. Woon Ho soon began to persist with
the idea of marriage, a thought that Induk had never considered because she had only
been familiar with Confucian marriages, which clearly enslaved a woman to her husband
and family. Induk wished to be like her missionary teachers: “[they] were the models for
my life. Most o f them had remained single, consecrated and devoted to their mission in
life.”163
'“ Ibid., p. 75.
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Woon Ho, however, intrigued Induk. He had been married when he was 12
and his bride only 13. He received his education at Bae Jae Boys’ School.164 At 16, and
after some schooling, he began to find his uneducated wife incompatible and unattractive.
This was an unfortunate casualty among many Korean women of the era. Thus, the
widening gap between an educated husband and an uneducated wife often led to
irreconcilable differences. One socially acceptable solution was for the man to engage a
concubine while the wife remained at home tending to domestic chores. However, Woon
Ho chose to divorce his wife and felt prepared to remarry an educated Christian woman.
Though attracted to him, Induk felt a pain because “the church was greatly opposed to
maniage to a divorced person (in 1918) and almost, if not completely, ostracized
members who so married. She was tom between loyalty to the man she loved and loyalty
to the church and the God whom she also loved and served.” Simultaneously, Ewha
awarded Induk a full scholarship to pursue further studies in the United States that caused
a tremendous dilemma in her heart.
However, against the advice of many, including her own mother, Induk chose
to marry Woon Ho. Her mother, once again, demonstrated a progressive idea. Many
mothers wished for their daughters to marry and settle down after school. It is especially
interesting to note that Induk was already 22 years of age, considered old for marriage,
164In 1885, a famed missionary, Mr. H. Appenzeller, founded a school to teach English to
boys. By 1887, it received government recognition and the King gave the school the name "Bae Jae
Hakdang" (Hall for Rearing Useful Men). As we understood the importance of naming boys and girls in
Helen’s and Induk’s biographies, even the names of the school had a discriminatory tone. Some Ewha
women complained that the boys’ school received a meaningful name while Ewha was, although pretty,
only a “pear blossom.”
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yet her mother advised against this union. Soon enough, Induk would learn the hard way
that her mother was right.
After mental anguish between the negative feelings about arranged marriage
and the wish to emulate her role model missionary teachers who devoted all their life to a
noble cause on one hand and the new style marriage she chose that involved a certain
amount of “dating,” the harsh reality would ensue shortly with a baby girl, Iris’s birth, an
elderly mother-in-law to take care of and the husband who was in severe debt and too
lazy to work. To bring home money, Induk worked as a music teacher at the Women's
Bible School (headed by Anna B. Chaffin) and as an English and/or choir teacher
whenever employment arose. A second baby girl, Lotus, came along as well. After a
long day of hard work, she would return home to find her husband and brother-in-law
napping, while the women toiled around them: her mother-in-law taking care of the
babies, an old woman cook165 preparing the meals, and herself bringing in the money.
It is no doubt that her present circumstances assaulted her sense of fairness and
equality just as when she was little she had felt great unfairness from her mother’s life—
and probably pained her intensely since she had altered her life and her beliefs to marry the
man she loved. The dream, which she had never abandoned, to pursue further studies in
America began to haunt her in this time of need. It was, indeed, a common dream for many
young people who sought new knowledge and culture from “advanced countries.”
I65ln those days, people were so poor that many women working as a cook were happy
enough to eat a free meal without being paid.
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Studies Abroad
Many new Christian women from Ewha yearned to travel abroad, and the
missionaries were eager and successful in finding scholarship money for their students,
especially as it served their plan of training future teachers to carry on the traditions of
the school. Women particularly found it important to seize this good opportunity that had
been opened to them by the missionaries, as they saw it as the means to get an education
that would open their career opportunities as well.
As a woman who was now suffering the very indignities that contradicted her
own education and choices, Induk finally decided to leave her husband and two small
children and settle in the United States for further study. “I set my eyes on the future. It
would be better for my children, for my country, for the future of our family life...and for
me as a modem woman to go after the rest of my formal education. I must go where the
training could be had.”166 It is interesting to reflect on Induk’s self-identification as “a
modem woman,” which could variably be translated as “an educated woman,” “a Christian
woman,” and “an Americanized woman.” It was painful for Induk once again to leave the
little girls to the grandmother, however, she believed that by leaving them to better herself
with advanced education, she would become more of a role model for her children, just as
her mother had guided her about the importance o f education to broaden her mind and
improve her life. And so, Induk left for Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia in 1926.
l66Pahk, September Monkey, p. 90.
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A single woman, in Induk’s case a married woman with two small children,
leaving for a foreign land at that time was analogous to a woman pilot flying to the moon
decades later. As much as they were derided and doubted by men, the few who dared to
break away were resolute to achieve their dream. Many Ewha women were reaching for
any opportunity to break away from—to make up for, perhaps—the traditional
constraints—social, emotional, and personal—that had been fastened on their maternal
ancestors for centuries. It was both symbolic and real: “to get a further education in
America, the dearest dream of every Ewha girl.”167
Her first foreign trip provided an unexpected collateral knowledge about life
that allowed her to reflect upon and search for new solutions to her country’s predicament.
On her stopover in Japan, for example, she noticed how free and independent the Japanese
looked in general, although her hostile feelings against the colonialists were still there,
while by contrast, her people appeared submissive and oppressed. She traced this stance to
Korea’s historical circumstances, which were filled with relentless political subjugation and
the negative dictates o f Confucianism controlling women’s lives.
In addition, the Japanese had already adopted and assimilated modem
Western culture into their lives. Induk was impressed by their sense of beauty, which
they cultivated to perfection, as an amalgam of Western ways with traditions they chose
to maintain. “[I was] also impressed by the fact that no matter how poor the family, the
l67Ibid.,p. 78.
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Japanese knew how to enjoy picnics and outings together”168 since she missed such
outings in her childhood. The loss of her father was a reason in part but more poignant
was her commentary on Korean men who did not join activities with family members.
She felt that Koreans, on the other hand, either accepted or rejected a foreign culture
blindly and lacked the ability to “balance” the best of both possible worlds. In a way,
Induk’s own belief that all opportunities can be attributed to God alone may be regarded
as somewhat “blind” or even “fanatical,” yet her fervent devotion to God anchored her to
a road that was directed to the humane and equitable treatment of all people and the
greater good of a country.
Crossing the immense Pacific Ocean on the Dollar liner S.S. Wilson, from
Japan to America, she thought: “Overcome by the majesty and all-encompassing power
of God, I prayed that He would help me to be great and good enough to understand and
care for all people as the ocean made room for all waters.... This moment was a
springboard upon which I would catapult into new life.”169 She was always concerned
with the welfare o f women that led her to devote her life to social work.
On another stopover in Hawaii, Induk observed enviable new lifestyles that
involved an easy rapport and collaboration between the sexes: men and women eating,
dancing, and worshipping together. Induk painfully recalled how even her progressive
Christian church had retained a curtain to separate the men from the women in the same
'“ Ibid., p. 96.
'“ Ibid., p. 97.
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room. As she adapted willingly to the good life of America, she wondered and lamented
why her own people could so readily ignore these possibilities to enhance their lives and
their spirits. It was more the “civilized” way of life she envied rather than the material
comfort.
Induk began her American education in 1926 as a junior at Wesleyan College,
in Macon, Georgia. She was a sponge, absorbing as much as she could find around her in
the classroom and beyond, for she believed that the Christian culture, which had long
dominated Western civilization, was the source of such a good life, especially for
American women. She enrolled in Bible class, philosophy, English history and literature,
music, and physical education. She occupied her time with her studies as well as Sunday
School activities, where she often related the stories of her “life as a boy” in order to
attend a boys’ school. Her listeners were delighted at being introduced to information
about the male-centered Korean school system. Sharing her tales provided an
opportunity for Induk to solidify her own belief that education was indeed a two-way
endeavor—teaching and learning. While she was at Wesleyan to learn, she also worked
hard to teach her American sisters of life in Korea. She accomplished this goal through
numerous speeches at the YWCA, Sunday Schools, churches, and Christian conferences.
At the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, for example, held in Detroit,
Michigan, between December 1927 and January 1928, Induk was one of six women from
Wesleyan to attend the convention. She exalted the fundamental honor of being a woman
and working for women: “of all the discoveries made in the latter part of the nineteenth
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century, the discovery o f womanhood in Korea...was the greatest] of all. This discovery
was due to Christianity by means of which my mother had been privileged to embark on
a new way of life and through her, I in turn benefited.” 170
She earned her Bachelor’s degree in 1928; two years later, she attended
Teachers College, Columbia University. Her decision was, to a large degree, determined
not by her children, who were well cared for by their grandmother, but by her husband.
He was married to a woman who, from the start, was “non-traditional,” but who, by leaps
and bounds, was surpassing and rejecting his need to control. By following her heart,
Induk had tried to break the tradition of Ewha graduates who generally did not marry,
since they often could not find a suitable mate with equal “qualifications.” Yet she
realized that she would never fit under the rule of another, especially a man. Induk chose
once again to stay in America and worked as a secretary for the Student Volunteer
Movement, under the leadership of John R. Mott, Sherwood Eddy, and Robert E. Speer.
During her two years as secretary (1928-1930), Induk attended many
conventions and conferences, including the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the
Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio, and the Florida Chain of Missionary Assemblies.
When she visited the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, she
requested a stop at the site where President Abraham Lincoln had given his memorable
speech. Not only was Induk demonstrating her knowledge of American history, but she
was showing her ability to connect school-based knowledge with the reality of daily life.
I70lbid., p. 119.
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As she stood on the very spot where Lincoln spoke, she prayed that she too could become
a great emancipator for Korean women: “to rise above subservience to a despot, to
become free, spiritually, politically, and economically.”171 For Induk, a “despot”
probably could be found in many roles: husband, father, son, political leader, men in
general. Yet her anger against the oppressive nature of men was tempered by her concern
to teach all youth, not just girls and that this education can be taught in homes, schools,
and churches, just as it was in the United States. The Ewha women who were sent to the
United States to get further education went home quite impressed by the American
educational system that taught boys and girls without discrimination of gender and the
value of honesty. They also envied a variety of educative institutions—libraries,
museums, and churches. Induk, and other compatriots, all concluded that once Korea
could reach the educational level they observed and benefited during their stay in the
United States, its material poverty and spiritual bankruptcy would be replenished. They
all shared an enormous idealism that underpinned the concept of “cultural nationalism”
for Korea.
Throughout her speaking engagements, Induk was constantly asked why she
chose to embrace Christianity, while forsaking her native faith systems such as
Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism. She referred every time to her experiences as
well as those of her mother and other women, who immediately felt uplifted by the power
of this religion of love. How was it possible to feel so liberated with one religion and not
l71Ibid., p. 124.
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so with others? No doubt because of her choice to convert, Induk felt this conviction
even more strongly than those who were bom into Christianity. For her, it was a living
testimonial and a conviction that her new religion had made her “a new woman.”
Finally, in 1930, Induk decided it was time to return home, armed with her
extensive knowledge and exposure to the American lifestyle. While attending Teachers
College, Induk lived at the International House, which was home to students from sixty
different nations. Any Korean woman, even one as broadminded and hungry for
experience as Induk was, would have been amazed by the diversity of the world in one
small dormitory. This experience, too, served as precious education for her. En route to
Korea, Induk opted to travel back via Europe and the Middle East so that she could
witness, first-hand, the cultures of the world that were so vividly impressed upon her
psyche by her college mates.
Four and a half years later, with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in hand,
Induk decided to return to Korea and begin her work for “her people.” Her long way
home, via Europe and the Middle East, would offer her experiences that she could apply
to the development of her homeland. She mused in her autobiography, “Now I was
returning home in a tourist cabin [on her journey to the U.S., she was a steerage
passenger] via Europe...taking with me a new knowledge and many living memories.
Surely America had given me a great deal.”172
172Ibid., p. 137.
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Induk describes her experiences during the trip with great admiration. In
London, she noted how gentle and polite the citizens were, particularly once when cars
stopped to let “a small Korean pedestrian woman” pass, which did not happen in Korea.
In Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, she marveled at how the combination of science,
engineering, and history had produced such wonderful art and architecture. In Athens,
she expressed her wish that a team of Korean athletes would compete in the Olympics.
In Denmark, she was especially intrigued by the Danish Folk High Schools and
Cooperatives that sold products through a co-op in order to minimize costs. She thought
that the idea of co-operative was appealing and practical for the Korean situation. “I
wanted to leam all I could about their methods. On my way to Copenhagen by train I
saw many evidences of their achievement—horses, pigs, cows, and poultry in the green
peaceful fields.”173 The observations she absorbed in these Western countries were to be
emulated, she was hoping, since they did not exist back home—and for Induk, these
enterprises represented civilization that was based on Christianity.
To the contrary, the closer she traveled home, Induk found less so-called
civilization and Christianity at work. In Russia, Induk observed that food was scarce and
religion was ridiculed. Turkey reminded her of Korea in its custom of publicly veiling
women’s heads, although this restriction was lifted once Turkey became a republic in
1923. Induk immediately associated India’s caste system and old culture with Korea’s
structure. Finally, closest to home, she encountered the richest and poorest strata of
,73lbid„ p. 142.
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people in China, and pondered why inequality was greater everywhere than in the United
States and Europe. Undoubtedly she made her own conclusion that Christian faith was
the one she loved most.
Induk wished to import the “civilized life” of the West to Korea, which struck
many as “backward.” This derogatory term was not to suggest that Korea lacked its own
rich culture or civilization, or that it was a primitive country; but clearly, the feudal
system based on Confucianism hindered the country’s progress into a modem age and,
hence, its citizens fell behind the times, or backward. She returned to Korea, grateful that
she was one of the first women from her country to study in the United States. Now her
challenge was to find ways to filter her knowledge and observations back to her people as
a “reformer.”
Return Home and Divorce in 1930
Upon returning home, Induk learned that her husband had indeed acquired a
concubine, a socially acceptable tradition. She first had to be an example for the people
she wished to influence. Part of her role modeling involved the crucial decision of
whether to divorce her husband. “Being bound by age-old concepts and traditions was
the worst burden of all. I had learned that the most precious thing in the world is freedom
to do what one believes is right and now I must choose between the Korean custom of
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remaining with my husband “no matter what,” or starting out on the independent way of
life.”'74
Her mother immediately encouraged a divorce by saying that, “Don’t think
that I want to interfere in your life, but today I am telling you this, not as your mother but
as a woman who has suffered much, and also as a messenger from a just God,”175 which
startled even Induk, but she respected her mother’s decisive and daring attitude for the
sake of her own future. Mrs. Pahk advised her firmly, calling her “son” again as if she
still believed that a son was stronger and more courageous. “Son, have you enough
strength to overthrow the unfair weight which has piled up for many centuries upon our
women?”176 Evidently, both mother and daughter were strong enough in their
convictions to endure social criticism or the pain that came with the stigma of divorce.
They chose freedom and independent life as “new women” would do.
Nevertheless, Induk agonized over the issue of divorce simply because it was
new. Korean women of any background—Christian or traditional—never divorced, nor
was there even an institution for divorce proceedings. The only option was that husbands
lived with concubines and wives endured. Because of these deeply ingrained thoughts,
Induk worried that her choice would ostracize her and condemn America for her
outrageous behavior. She knew Korean men would blame her for setting a precedent, but
she felt it was necessary to do so, if only for the sake of the next generation of women—
,74Ibid., p. 163.
l75Ibid., p. 164.
176Ibid.
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including her own daughters. Her choice would insure that she would never find another
husband, since divorced women were avoided; she would lose her children because, by
law, her husband had custody of them; her friends would chastise her; and her church
would consider her a bad woman. Despite the consequences, Induk chose divorce.
The repercussions of her choice inevitably followed. Induk was asked to
leave the church where she was teaching a Sunday School class because she was now a
divorcee. However, two good friends, Dr. and Mrs. Hugh Cynn—a world-traveling
Korean couple who had been educated in America—allowed her to use their living room
for her own Sunday School class with eight children. The “living room school” of the
very first missionary, Mrs. Scranton, was replicated anew. Just as before, when there was
no official solution or recourse to a problem, a “new woman” made do with whatever
could be found without risk of being thwarted in the effort to improve a situation. Induk
employed her “new education” through Bible stories, singing songs, and playing games,
ending each session with refreshments for the children. The students enjoyed the time so
much that they brought their friends and, soon, the Cynns had to construct an addition to
their house to accommodate what would total one hundred children.
Community Service
As a way to assuage the social and personal pain of the divorce, Induk
compressed her time and energy into good causes. She organized a Business Professional
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Women’s Club in Seoul,177 consisting of forty women from all walks of life—teachers,
nurses, shopkeepers, and homemakers. This club functioned as a support group to help,
encourage, and boost the hope of each woman for their futures. Their first project was a
Women’s Skating Contest—a daring event since girls had no opportunities to learn
skating. Some women learned quickly and it mattered little whether they were good
skaters or not. It was an entertainment. Surprisingly, many spectators came and the entire
country learned that women could actually play sports as well as men.
After such a success, Induk decided to instigate a few more modem ideas.
Her new project would incorporate simple activities that filled the everyday life of
Korean women. Using the local YMCA auditorium, she organized a fashion show, for
which the club members sewed clothing for children to introduce practical dresses in
Western model instead of their cumbersome traditional garb. They also encouraged
colorful clothing for elderly women, who were usually expected to wear drab colors
simply because they were old. This, too, was a form of education to modernize and
revolutionize even the simplest elements of daily life.
With such well-received activities, Induk felt encouraged that women could
make a definite contribution to the betterment of society. She felt special attention had to
be devoted to children and women in rural areas who were the most deprived. Illiteracy
was high, and school-age children after third grade were not able to continue because
their families lacked money and required them to work on their farms. She thought it
l77See also Lee’s Business School at Ewha.
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was, in no uncertain terms, a form of child slavery. Induk believed that whatever the cost
the problem of the poor and the illiterate should be addressed through progressive ideas.
They [village children] were literally diseased by poverty, a disease
which could be cured only by the introduction of modem methods of
agriculture, self-government, liberal education, and the like.178
Focusing on helping villagers out of their desperation, Induk organized
evening classes for mothers. She began with villages near Seoul that were accessible by
public transportation. She organized photographic displays of how babies in other lands
were taken care of in healthy, sanitary ways. She introduced the concept of “recycling,”
using old products in inventive ways instead of buying new products. She emphasized
using common sense to enhance one’s life. While Induk taught children songs and games
to enrich their lives, she found that the women villagers enjoyed these activities as well.
She taught elementary reading and writing using the Korean phonetic alphabet. Without
paper or pencils, the villagers wrote their words with sticks on the muddy road; once they
did well, however, they were rewarded with the actual writing implements. Induk
awarded prizes to the children who exemplified the best hygiene, those who had the
cleanest faces, hands, and fingernails.
As well, Induk recalled her observations in Denmark and instituted the first
consumer’s cooperative system. Commodities such as soaps and cooking oil were
bought wholesale with a common fund collected from each member and then sold at
retail over time. When the profit was collected, they all shared it. Ironically, this money-
l78Pahk, September Monkey, p. 171.
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earning activity intrigued the women’s husbands and sons, who offered newfound respect
for their ingenuity. With funds from the Florida Chain of Missionary Assembles, Induk
continued her rural development work for four years. Simultaneously, she mobilized
individuals who were interested in the work and established a center to train future
leaders. A Society for Rural Women and Children was organized, starting with 150
members. Once again, Induk’s early education was applied to her career—she had
learned from the missionaries that leaders and teachers needed training in order to carry
on the work. She herself had been selected as a teacher for Ewha. Now Induk was again
selected, this time moving to train a broader class of students—the women of Korea.
Despite Induk’s fear that she would never see her two daughters again, they
soon were reunited. While Induk studied in the United States, Iris (14 years) and Lotus
(12 years) had stayed with their father. However, soon after the divorce, Woon Ho
remarried and the girls were allowed to live with their mother. Induk was afraid that
these five years and the influence of their father would have made the girls too traditional
and old-fashioned for her standards. Conversely, she was worried the girls would think
her too modem and Americanized. She persevered in the belief that “any girl, given an
education, could take the place of any son,” and so she welcomed her daughters into her
life and her ongoing quest for education.
Second Trip to the U. S.: Taking Korea to America (1936)
Now that her personal matters were becoming resolved and the rural
community work was established, Induk wished to return to the United States to raise
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funds for the community project. But Induk’s underlying drive was to inform the
American people of how precarious Korea was in 1936, a small and poor country
surrounded by giant power in a dangerous world. Induk felt the rest of the world needed
to know this reality: “Now I felt driven to be a kind o f [Korean] missionary to
America.” 179
Induk left on her second trip to America in November 1936. During a twentymonth stay, Induk gave 642 speeches in colleges and universities, high schools, churches,
women’s clubs, and civic organizations. She traveled 80,000 miles throughout the
United States and Canada. The organizers of these events were the Student Volunteer
Movement, the Florida Chain of Missionary Assemblies, the Canadian Student Christian
Movement, and the United Church of Canada. While evangelism was the major theme,
Induk spoke continuously of the deplorable situation of the Korean farmers. She
explained how raising their spiritual standards (i.e., converting them to the Christian
faith) also necessitated raising economic aid to eliminate such subhuman conditions. As
an example, she described how cows and oxen were used in place of tractors, which
could not be afforded; but even those animals were owned and used cooperatively by a
few farming families since a cow at that time cost 30 U.S. dollars. Many listeners were
moved by Induk’s speech and collected enough money to buy 33 cooperative cows for
the Korean villages. Other donations were used to set up a Training Center for Rural
Leaders in Korea, a necessity for tackling the problem of educating the farmers. Induk’s
l79Ibid.,p. 181.
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second trip was indeed a success, and after nearly two years, in 1938 she was going to
return home to continue her educational mission.
Returning Home in 1938
Induk resumed her Bible class for college men and women under the
suspicious eyes o f Japanese officials. Nevertheless, she remained undeterred in her
community work. With her U.S. funds, she built two cottages at Yang Gok, a village
thirty miles from Seoul, which were used as women’s classes, a children’s nursery, and
living quarters for teachers. However, after a short while due to the increased Japanese
pressures, she had to sell her two cottages, but built Duk Wha,180 a school for sixty girls
in Seoul, a much larger city than Yang Gok where Japanese surveillance was less. These
girls were high school graduates who were either too young to marry or too poor to go to
college. Induk was motivated to prolong the girls’ marriage age, since she felt that the
traditional age of 12 or 13 was part of the “backward” tradition of the country. She
offered a one-year course on homemaking and bookkeeping, which would insure that the
girls could become good wives and daughters-in-law when the time came. Most
important, they learned responsibility and balance between old customs and modem
manners, as Induk believed it was not necessary to give up one for the other.
'*°Duk Wha, translated as virtue and peace.
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Once again, the doors of Duk Wha Institute closed in 1944, as the Japanese
became embroiled in World War II, Induk’s world also began to crumble. She watched
as food became scarce, Christians fled to underground shelters, and all usable materials
(including metal utensils) were confiscated for the war effort. In addition, her mother fell
ill and shortly after died at the age of 85. Induk wrote of her feelings at this terrible time:
As I reviewed Mother’s life, I realized what a wonderful woman she
had been. She had belonged to the traditional life of old Korea but
ever since she had caught the new vision in the Christian Church—that
women were individuals—she had been determined to give her
daughter an opportunity to leam, in order that she might lead Korean
women to a fuller and richer life, and through the women to help
Korean men also, for if the Korean women were better educated they
would raise the standard of family life. I was proud to be my mother’s
daughter. I had an obligation to work for her ideals. I recalled what
she had said about the new Korea coming out of the birth pangs of the
war years. I saluted her spirit. ‘Dear Mother, so be it.’ We would not
weep for her, nor even for ourselves; but our days, our hearts and our
house had many lonely comers.181
Liberation
On August 15,1945, Induk felt great happiness when Japan surrendered to the
Allied Forces. With the end of the war came the end of stifling rules such as speaking
Japanese, bowing to Shinto shrines, worshipping the emperor, and choosing Japanese
names. Until Korea could stand on its own feet again, the American Military
Government was established. While it might have been considered another form of
foreign dominance, Induk and the other Ewha girls welcomed the American presence
'“ Ibid., p. 207.
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because it reflected the Western world in which a new God, education, and culture could
help Korea rid itself of the past.
Now that the country was in the hands of the Americans for the time being,
the indefatigable Induk began to pay renewed attention not only to women, but to
Korea’s children and youth who would become the backbone of the new Korea. She was
moved at seeing the Korean flag hoisted over the Capitol building in Seoul. This
patriotic fervor was spreading all across the nation, and from the north and as far away as
Manchuria, refugees streamed into Seoul. Men, women, and children came with nothing
but the clothes on their back, all willing to work out of necessity—a true democratic
order of life.
American soldiers stationed in Korea during this period demonstrated open
affection toward Korean children. Induk, as did a surprising number of other Koreans,
found this uninhibited expression pleasing. The Korean way had always been much more
reserved in expression of affection and clearly defined for children to respect male
authority figures. This reserve did not imply that children were unloved, but that the
“American way” was fresh and welcome, liberating and invigorating. Along with this
released emotion came social efficiency, in the form of building roads and airports,
hygienic control, women suffrage, and allowing women to become police officers for the
first time in Korean history. Induk joined in immediately as the Chairwoman o f the
Political Education Committee of the Patriotic Women’s Society, in order to advocate the
benefits of voting among women.
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In December 1945, Induk became a lecturer on radio, broadcasting in the
Political Education Section of the Department of Public Information under the American
Military Government. She spent fifteen minutes each week to promote public education
on such subjects as franchise, democracy, responsibility, and equality. These were all
new ideas and topics for the majority of Korean women. Under the auspices of the
American Red Cross, she also gave weekly lectures to American soldiers about Korea.
Induk truly became the most suitable spokesperson to lecture on these topics, as her own
life bridged the two cultures for the best of both possible worlds.
At this junction where East met West, the contributions of the “new women”
were remarkable as liaisons and as teachers of the two cultures. Induk, along with Helen
Kim and other Ewha graduates, were continuously called upon to represent Korean
women at international meetings and conferences. Most of her speeches focused on the
importance of democratic education for Korea’s youth. Induk believed the words
“democratic” and “Christian” were synonymous. She was quick and proud to point out
that positive Korean leaders of the time in government, education, science, and medicine
had all received a Christian education—they were, in short, American-educated and
democratic-minded.
Whenever she returned home, Induk would always bring a part of America
with her. Even in simple ways, she always collected boxes of pencils, mittens, socks, and
soaps that she distributed among the Ewha students. On a larger scale, she secured
scholarships from American colleges and universities to help bring Korean women to the
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United States. She was not only reciprocating what she had received herself as a young
student at Ewha, but she was investing in the future because she believed that an
American, democratic, Christian education was the best choice for Korean youth.
Induk was proud to announce publicly in her autobiography that her entire
professional life reflected her distillation of American culture, its best and most serious
facets. During her trips to the States, she learned swimming at the age of 28, skating
during her thirties, the Japanese language in her forties, and driving in her fifties. She
was a perpetual learner. Even on buses and trains, Induk engaged in conversations with
fellow travelers, in a casual attempt to educate them about Korea while also learning
from them about America. The “September Monkey” eventually made a total o f four
trips to the United States, traveled 585,000 miles in 35 countries, and gave more than
3,000 speeches. Her message clearly was that regardless of age, one could leam anything
if one fought for a cause. She particularly wished to convey the message to youth who,
she perceived, were timid and suppressed by the very culture they could change.
Although her vocational school, Duk Wha Institute for Girls, was forced to
close in 1944 by the Japanese, she never forgot her dream project. From that moment for
the next ten years, she made more trips to the U.S. to raise fund until 1955. During this
period, Tai Young Lee came upon her during her trip to the U.S., who commented on
Induk’s frugal way of life by noticing Induk’s same old clothes in order to save money
for the school.182 In 1972, at long last, a two-two year college, Induk Institute of Design
l82Tai Young Lee, My Encounters, My Life (Seoul, Korea: Jung Woo Sa, 1991) p. 62.
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172
was established with one hundred young men and women exploring industrial,
commercial, and environmental design for control of pollution. It was the first school of
its kind.
In 1976, she was back to the States to celebrate her fiftieth year since she first
went there as a young student. She reminisced about that occasion. “I feel free and happy
in my fiftieth year in America. It is only through the American Christian missionaries
that I learned the secret of being liberated and fulfilled.”183
Induk broke from tradition in many radical ways—from becoming a “boy” for
the sake of education, to divorcing her husband for the sake of devoting herself to
women’s causes and traveling hundreds of thousands of miles to leam and to teach.
Through her efforts, single-minded work, and dynamic and open personal style, she
spawned a generation of “new women,” Ewha women who not only learned academic
subjects but lived a profound Christian faith that was intertwined with the American
spirit. While Induk was not the only exception to the rule, she was indeed an outstanding
one.
l83Pahk, The Cock Still Crows, p. 140.
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Photograph 3. Tai Young Lee, from the cover of her book My Encounters, My Life, 1991.
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174
Chapter V
TAI YOUNG LEE (1914-1998)
Early Beginnings and Family Dynamics
No Korean woman was as devoted as Tai Young Lee to promoting women’s
issues in the world of law. Her devotion was particularly meaningful since Korean
women before her time were never protected by the laws of the country. Tai Young was
awarded a law degree in 19S3 and became the first Korean female attorney. Because the
system failed to support such an ambitious woman, she achieved her goal only by
overcoming multiple obstacles and with the help of a few strong and influential
individuals. Through meeting her challenges, she was able to change the lives of many
Korean women through law.
In her autobiographical sketches entitled My Encounters, My Life,m Tai
Young expressed her gratitude to many individuals, without whom she could never have
succeeded. As the title suggests, she had numerous encounters throughout her life which
helped her break away from the expected traditions for any Korean woman: to be a good
IS4Tai Young Lee, My Encounters, My Life: Autobiographical Sketches (Seoul, Korea: Jung
WooSa, 1991).
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mother and obedient wife. Hers was a unique and single-minded journey, but not a
completely lonely one, thanks to the support o f other “new women” (and a few men) of
vision.
Bom in 1914 in the small village of Bukjin, where catching a train required a
three-day walk on a mountain road to reach the station, Tai Young received her high
school education at Pyong Yang in 1931 and taught briefly at an elementary school in her
village. She called three individuals the most important influences in her life: her
mother, Kim Heung Won, who served as her role model; her older brother, Tae Yun, who
instilled in her good will and dreams; and her husband, Chung II Hyung, who helped her
achieve her dreams.
Tai Young’s mother, Kim, was bom in Kangge, Pyongbuk, in a relatively
affluent family headed by a father who was a scholar in Chinese classics. Kim, however,
only had the chance to leam a limited amount, Han ’g ul and The Thousand Character
Classic, and was primarily a simple village woman. Spencer Palmer states that
“Although by the mid-fifteenth century Koreans had developed their own distinctive
writing system called han ’gul, which was easy to leam, if a Korean wished to enter a
government service he studied the ‘true writing,’ The Thousand Character Classic,
written in Chinese.”185
185Spencer J. Palmer, Hollym Corporation, Korea and Christianity: The Problem o f
Identification with Tradition (Seoul, Korea: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch Monograph Series
No. 2), p. 42).
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One notices the fact that Kim was from a rather well-to-do family and had a
chance to leam the basic alphabet and some Chinese that had been available only to men.
At the age of eighteen, she married Lee Heung Guk, also the same age, and bore two sons
and one daughter, Tai Young. Unfortunately, when the baby girl was only one year old,
her father, at the age of thirty, was killed in a mining accident. While he had saved a
considerable amount of money, it had been funneled to Manchuria for the cause of
Korean independence. Thus, Kim became a young widow, with three small children, few
resources, and no social support.
Tai Young grew to respect her hard-working mother, who toiled day and night
regardless of the task. Kim accepted a gamut of male and female jobs, including
shoveling, painting, and papering walls, as well as sewing and modestly decorating the
house. Interestingly, Tai Young herself categorized these jobs as distinctly male or
female, based on the degree of physical capacity they entailed. From an early age, Kim
taught little Tai Young dishwashing and drawing water from a nearby well. From twelve
years on, she even knew how to sew her own simple clothing. Thus, Tai Young herself
became very familiar with a variety of “male” and “female” chores and was never afraid
of hardship or physical labor.
The personality of Tai Young’s mother also had a profound influence on her
daughter. Kim was a naturally reticent person, a woman of few words; yet when she
spoke, her few select statements struck deeply and with rich import. Tai Young
remembered the time when, years later, she received an award for presenting a good
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177
speech at Ewha, her mother sent her a congratulatory telegram with only two words:
“Very happy.” Tai Young was moved by the simplicity of her mother’s sentiment, which
would have been less powerful and less poignant in a barrage of complimentary words.
Tai Young also respected her mother’s extreme generosity. Kim would share
all her belongings with neighbors, teachers at her children’s school, the minister of her
church, and her congregation. While it was the tradition of a “good neighbor” to pass
special food around the village from house to house, Kim considered it both an
expectation and a personal expression of her love for others. She instilled this feeling
into her daughter, whom she kept busy carrying out such errands.
In retrospect, Tai Young attributed her successful life as a lawyer to her
mother, and traced her own concern for women in predicaments to her mother’s ability to
be a good listener, always willing to hear someone’s pain and offer sage advice at the
proper moment. She was also proud of her mother because she found educational
opportunities not only for her two sons but for her daughter as well. Kim virtually
proclaimed to her children that she would support any child who chose to continue
studying as long as it was humanly possible for her to do so. Her words came to life one
day in a significant episode which Tai Young recalled in her writings. Kim once noticed
that the oil in her sons’ lamp was unused while the oil in Tai Young’s lamp was
completely gone. She remarked the next morning to her children that she was keenly
disappointed to leam that the boys were not studying so hard, while obviously her
daughter was “burning the midnight oil” with her studies until it had disappeared.
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However, when Tai Young heard this discriminatory comment, she confronted her
mother with her proclamation about equal treatment and equal educational opportunities
for her children, regardless of gender. “I challenge you, Mom, if you think only sons can
study and you support them, I’ll ask God in Heaven if He also thinks that way. If He
agrees with you, I am going to drown in the Ku Ryong Kang [a huge river near where
they lived].186 In later life, Tai Young missed her mother dearly because she often
wanted to thank her for influencing her fight for equality between men and women. She
took her mother’s beliefs and activated them to the utmost degree in the profession of
law. “My relationship with mother is more than mother-daughter relationship. Her
passing away happened when I was a little over thirty years old. Not only during those
thirty some years but also afterwards, she had been my soul mate, a counselor, and a
teacher.”187
Tai Yun, the brother who was older by twelve years, was a substitute father
for Tai Young since she had lost her own father at the age of one. She naturally regarded
him as a father figure because of the age gap between them, but even more so because
Confucian edict instilled in her respect for her older sibling. Tai Yun went to a local
primary school, then to Bae Jae High School188 in Seoul. Following this, he returned to
his country to work for American missionaries, Miss Miller and Miss Esther,189 in the
Lee, p. 18.
,87Ibid„ p. 14.
I88The counterpart of Ewha, founded by the Methodist mission, while Bae Jae was a mission
school for boys, founded by the Presbyterian mission in 1885(7).
I89To be respectful, they called them Miss Miller and Miss Esther without the first names.
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1920s. During this time, he learned how to drive and lived quite an avant-garde lifestyle.
With help from his employees, he traveled to Japan for further studies and returned to
Korea to found a small transportation company, Dong Yang Un Su Co. In doing so, he
was perpetuating the tradition in Korean families, as eldest son, to serve as heir for the
family succession.
In addition to business, Tai Yun had a special talent for music and worked as a
choir conductor at the church managed by his maternal grandfather. He encouraged his
brother and sister to play musical instruments from an early age. Together, they formed a
trio—Tai Yun on violin, Tai Heup on harmonica, and twelve-year-old Tai Young on
piano—and performed at the church. At this time, such a music group, comprised of
siblings, was rare. However, “breaking the mold” for Tai Young and her family was a
kind of tradition in itself, even more so than it was for Helen Kim and Induk Pakh, and
can be explained in a variety of ways. First, Tai Young was bom about two decades after
Helen and Induk, during which time Korean society had become modernized,
Westernized, and Christianized. Second, Tai Yun, “substitute father,” had received a
modem Christian education at Bae Jae and was employed by the missionaries, and his
lifestyle keenly influenced his impressionable young sister. In fact, without the work of
Helen and Induk, and many more new women, Tai Young’s lifestyle might not have been
so free and broad.
Tai Yun recognized that her little sister had an aptitude for logical arguments
and encouraged her to think about becoming a lawyer—a revolutionary idea at the time.
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A girl entering the law profession, based on advice from an older brother, was too
modem even for the social changes that were occurring in Korea. However, because she
admired and respected her brother/surrogate father, she took his suggestion to heart,
without any clue to the implications of her decision. She treasured all that her brother did
for her—buying her expensive modem shoes and a magazine subscription that he
purchased for her. Although Lee chose to marry after she graduated from Ewha, she
remained devoted to her brother’s dream of her being a lawyer. He had worried that her
choice to marry would destroy her desire to work and use her analytical talents, since at
the time, marriage for a woman focused purely on the home and left no room for
pursuing professional aspirations. However, the brother’s influence was permanent, and
her own sense of obligation and respect carried her through to fulfill her destiny.
Childhood Experiences: Excellent Speech-Maker
Tai Young’s precocious verbal skills were evident from an early age. While
barely five years old, in 1919, she gave a little speech at her church. Because
kindergartens did not exist, the church was the only available structured venue for young
children to play and listen to stories, except on neighborhood comers or family
courtyards which were more personal and less guided in their goals. Tai Young’s selfconfidence and pride soared when the congregation applauded her speech. Her message
of thanksgiving was nestled in the lovely image of picking branches of wild flowers on a
nearby hill and presenting the bouquet to the church in order to thank God for the beauty
of nature; likewise, she told of how in autumn, she would pick fruits and vegetables with
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her mother from their yard and thank God for their abundance of food.
When Tai Young was seven years old, her teacher Um Hee An, a graduate of
the boys’ school Bae Jae High, conducted a speech competition. She was the youngest
contestant. Her first words uttered at the podium reflected her youthful awareness that
the position of women in society needed to change because it evoked seemingly
unnatural reactions from parents for whom children should be of the utmost importance.
“I’m a daughter,” Tai Young said. “When a boy is bom, my whole neighborhood is
filled with happiness. A girl is bom and all the mothers weep. I worry if this will
continue for a long time.” 190 This may not have been Tai Young’s personal experience
since her mother always treated her sons and one young daughter fairly and equally.
However, Tai Young was astute enough to see the vivid contrast around her through the
prevailing mentality o f her neighbors and the larger society. Rather than yield to this
rampant attitude, she accepted the challenge of trying to change it. She always attributed
her convictions to her mother and her teacher Um Hee An, who instilled in her the
concept of equal education for both men and women.
At the age o f fourteen, while attending Soong Duk School, she received her
first award in a speech contest on the topic of “Let girls and boys receive an equal chance
for education.” Not only was she a convincing speaker, it seems, but also her thoughtprovoking essay was compelling enough to affect all those who were willing to listen and
consider her argument.
l90Lee, p. 44.
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As a senior at Ewha, in 1935, Tai Young participated in the first national
women’s speech competition under the auspices of a prestigious daily newspaper,
Choson Choong Ang llbo. Mr. Yo Woon Hyung was the president of the daily and one
of the judges of the competition. The title of her speech was “The Second Doll,” a
reference to Ibsen’s play, The D oll’s House, in which the heroine Nora leaves her
husband and children to follow her heart. Tai Young, however, denounced Nora for
leaving; she maintained that a Korean Nora had the right to stay in her home and kick her
husband out instead! It was a powerful statement, especially from a woman. The
audience responded in a less-than-friendly manner, with some of them openly aghast at
the idea of any woman being so demanding of her husband. Despite the criticism, she
was awarded first prize. From this event, she became even more convinced that being a
lawyer was her call and women’s issues her mission.
Years at Ewha (1932-1936f: Many Lessons
In her writings,191 Tai Young always acknowledged that she felt fortunate to
attend both an all-female (Ewha) and an all-male college (her law school)—an
uncommon occurrence for the women of that era. From 1932 to 1936, she attended the
Home Economics Department of Ewha College. The College at that time had no law
department; home economics was deemed the appropriate discipline for women to study.
It would only be ten years later in 1946 that Tai Young would enroll in the law school of
191My Encounters, Haengbok yui Balgyun, Charari Min Bi, and others are listed in Primary
sources in the Bibliography.
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the prestigious, all-male Seoul National University and carve an unprecedented niche for
herself in the history of Korean women.
As a student, Tai Young was described as resilient and hard-working. Once
she set a goal for herself, she generally achieved it by sheer hard work. She cultivated the
best of both settings: at Ewha, she absorbed and reflected the life of a fair-minded and
just human being with Christian sensibilities; at the law school, she learned knowledge
and scholarship, and the means to apply her fair-mindedness to social change. At Ewha,
in addition to the Bible study, English, and Hygiene, the students built relationships with
peers, teachers, and missionaries that would last a lifetime. As they shared this simple
and informal setting, with few options to socialize outside of school, the girls shared their
pleasures and pains with each other and their memorable role models. Although many of
the students’ mothers (those of Helen Kim, Induk Pahk, and Tai Young Lee included)
were the first profound influence on their lives, instilling the need to reach beyond their
restrictions, an intellectual and cultural generation gap continued to distance mothers
from daughters. This was a generation gap of transition, and neither mothers nor
daughters were firmly grounded in the changes that one sought for the other. Thus, Ewha
provided both parties—especially the daughters—with neutral ground to develop their
goals, and gave the young, receptive girls golden opportunities to meet a world of
individuals who had successfully bridged the gap and etched their mark on the new
generation.
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The Home Economics Department had been founded by an American
missionary teacher from Wichita, Kansas, Miss Harriet Morris.192 She came to realize
how much time Korean women wasted because of antiquated and outdated methods and
expectations for presenting a home—everything from food preparation to dressing,
hygiene to home decoration. She taught the Ewha girls that they should not remain mere
keepers of old traditions, but rather creators of new ones. While Miss Morris never
denounced the ‘traditional way,” particularly in consideration of her students’ heritage,
she promised new ways that could infiltrate the old—and perhaps eventually replace
them. Tai Young was certainly impressed by Miss Morris’s devotion and dedication to
both Christian faith and the improvement of women’s lives.193
Another influence came from a teacher named Chang Ki Won, a quiet but
resolute woman who was often disappointed by her students’ poor homework, but even
more disappointed by their lack of awareness of the women’s plight of the time. In her
writings, Tai Young reflected on one class with Chang that affected her deeply. She
recalled her teacher pointing out a keen insight into an old tradition:
[Chang said] ‘When Korean women, your mothers and grandmothers
included, pound their cloth after washing with a pair of wooden sticks, to
some artists or men of literature, the noise and the movement may sound
romantic, but have you ever thought that this way of treating cloth by
pounding is actually beating women’s heads?’
l92Miss Morris sponsored my oldest sister for an American education. She earned her
Master’s degree from Wichita University.
,93The missionaries’ idea of making a Korean woman “a better Korean woman” necessitated
modernizing the standard of life from the old system. For example, nutrition, simplified clothing, and
hygiene were all taught.
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Tai Young reacted by saying,
I felt struck as if with those sticks being talked about. I know that the
teacher meant to get rid of the old, traditional, and inefficient method
of laundering, and also to point out that women engaged in such
activity were nothing but slaves to domestic chores. A better way
could be found or at least imported in from the West. This is a
symbolic emancipation of Korean women from shackles that had tied
them to traditional and old customs.194
While Chang obviously rallied for women, Tai Young herself recalled feeling that as she
studied in the Home Economics Department at Ewha, people would question why she
would study such a subject when she had such a quick brain. Thus, despite its
progressiveness, Ewha seemed to foster (even unconsciously) a portrait of women as
homemakers, albeit using their talents to do so to the fullest. Tai Young was not happy
when people judged her by downgrading the subject she had chosen. While she looked at
it as a compliment of sorts that she was an intelligent woman, she knew the mentality
offering this criticism was steeped in a prestige-bound and hierarchical attitude that had
only impeded Korea’s modernization.
Another teacher of great influence was Dr. Kim Ho Jik, who later became
Vice-Minister of Education of Korea after the liberation in 1945. Dr. Kim taught Tai
Young his own improved method for making “meju,”195 the basic staple food in the
Korean diet, better known as “bean paste” to the rest of the world. Home Economics
l94Lee, pp. 65-66.
l9SMeju is made from soy beans, which are mashed, molded into a brick size, and left to
ferment in a warm temperature for a long period of time. In a traditional home, the only warm place was a
small section of the floor of a room that was heated by wood. During meju-making season, not only the
warm floor space was taken, but the fermenting smell filled the entire house.
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students at Ewha were taught the more efficient, least labor-intensive strategies for
maintaining a home. Tai Young herself saw connections between these mundane
activities to the broader world of women’s needs: with a time-saving recipe, women
could be liberated from the kitchen and have more flexibility to accomplish more
important goals.
Another of Tai Young’s influential teachers at Ewha was Induk Pahk, who
was 18 years older and taught Sunday School upon completing her own studies at the
school. Induk radiated Westernization even though she always wore Korean dress and
uphold patriotic and nationalistic enthusiasm for developing Korea, raising living
standards, and reforming the mentality and spirit of her people. For Induk, the key was
Christianity, which would open the doors to a modem, civilized, and Western lifestyle.
Tai Young was particularly impressed, and influenced, by Induk’s indomitable concern to
help her country. Tai Young was one of the twenty girls that Induk sent to the village of
Yang Joo in Kyung Gi province, to replicate a Danish communal lifestyle and raise
money to buy a cow for the villagers. Ultimately, the Japanese eliminated this movement
for rural development because they suspected its aim was to promote nationalism.
Curiously, Induk and Tai Young’s future husband Chung were good friends
because they came from the same home town and their two mothers were close. Their
commonalties—a new God, a new education, a new nation—were bestowed to Tai
Young once she joined their circle and absorbed them into her own life.
Another member of this circle was Helen Kim, who was the Vice-Principal at
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187
the school when Tai Young entered in 1932. She greatly admired and respected Helen:
“I know she is a thinker and a scholar who occupied a prominent leadership among
women. Her views on many things are far-sighted and profound, and her faith is so
sincere and deep that it is not an exaggeration to say that it will take another one hundred
years to have a woman of that stature.” 196 Tai Young often regretted that she did not
always side with Helen on matters pertaining to school policy and administration—or the
lives of women. In fact, Tai Young called herself something of a “rebel,” causing trouble
to Helen, who taught the course “Women and Career.”
In this course, Helen adamantly espoused that a woman must choose either the
role of a woman or the role of a professional—one basically would cancel out the other.
If a woman was required to be a full-time homemaker after marriage, then any decision to
have a career later in life could never become her priority, and her split life would in fact
minimize the degree of careful attention she could pay to either responsibility. Helen
would express this conviction during her entire tenure at Ewha. When a good student
married, Helen never concealed her disapproval of the choice because she would have
preferred the student to cultivate her intelligence and talents at Ewha and prepare
succeeding generations. She firmly believed that Korean women needed good teachers
and leaders instead of more marriages. On the other hand, Tai Young challenged this
position; for her, a happy marriage, aligned with a professional goal, was not only
possible, but even desirable. One would certainly enhance the other, facilitate the other,
l96Ibid„ pp. 50-54.
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support the other. Tai Young was fortunate to have found a soul mate who permitted her
to achieve both goals. But even before she met her husband, the desire to be a career
woman (fueled in large measure by her brother as well) was firmly implanted. For an
assignment in Helen’s class, for example, Tai Young picked Madame Curie as her role
model, declaring her enormous respect for the scientist’s choices and ability to balance
career, home, and lifelong study.
Husband: Another Teacher
In defense of female intelligence and characteristics, Tai Young believed
women had cognitive intelligence as well as affective feminine attributes such as service,
nurturance, and patience. She was fair enough to add that men also have intelligence and
admirable characteristics, particularly career-mindedness, courage and bravery, women
had not developed their cognitive side adequately because o f the long history of
suppression. Knowing that young college-educated women continue to work as
secretaries to serve a male boss, Tai Young was urging young women to become more
assertive and develop their cognitive side while also keeping their femininity. She had
advocated a vocational duality—marriage and career—and likewise to develop a personal
duality—cognitive and affective potentials—to the maximum.197
Tai Young was a competitive person and believed in maximizing one’s
potentials by working hard and avoiding laziness. She believed women could do
l97Tai Young Lee, Haeng Bok Yui Bal Gyun (Discovery o f Happiness) (Seoul, Korea: In Mul
Yungooso, 1979), pp. 74-77. This is a collection of her essays on various topics.
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anything men could do, a lesson she learned as a child from her mother who did all that
was necessary, regardless of the quality or nature o f the tasks.
One year after Tai Young graduated from Ewha in 1936, she met an American
educated (doctorate in sociology from Drew University, Madison, New Jersey) Christian,
Chung II Hyung through a common friend, minister Chung Dal Bin. Even with the openmindedness of the Christian community, “go-betweens” were considered necessary to
facilitate meetings between young people taking into account the fact the average citizens
called church a “place of romance” (yon ae dang). They were married in the same year.
For the first nine years of their marriage, until the country’s liberation from
Japan in 1945, Tai Young suffered a difficult and painful life because of her husband’s
anti-Japanese attitude and imprisonment for his participation in national independence
activities. These events never cracked the foundation of their marriage or their maturity
to endure as husband and wife. While Tae Young did not have happy memories of her
early married years, she never complained about the period; rather, she was proud of
Chung’s resistance to social injustice and proud of her own strong will to overcome
obstacles. She related her hardships in her writing:
The last seven years before the liberation [were] the most painful and
tough period of my life. My salary from teaching was 60 won, which
hardly covered the life expenses for the three children and the old lady.
Moreover, I had to find the extra money to send to the prison where
my husband was staying because he fell sick and could not eat the
food given by the prison. In order to buy extra nutritious food and
medication, I had to pay 95 won to the prison, which was much more
than my salary.198
l98Lee, My Encounters, p. 118.
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In order to make this extra money, Lee started a small business sewing padded
comforters and supplying them to a few retail stores. She was immensely grateful for
having learned how to sew from her mother and from the Home Economics Department
at Ewha. Having a competitive nature, Lee wanted to make the best comforters available
in order to outrun the other comforter makers. She immersed herself in this enterprise
and produced highly marketable items. Despite her entrepreneurial savvy, it was a
courageous step for a female college graduate to resort to a job as a comforter maker and
essentially become a peddler.
In the long run, Tai Young was also grateful to her mother-in-law, who
allowed her freedom to pursue her interests by helping raise her three children, and to her
husband, who gently pushed her toward her destiny. For the ensuing 37 years, Chung
would support, encourage, and love her without parallel. As Tai Young wrote in the
hindsight of old age: “I am almost 80 years now. For 35 years of my working time, I
have seen and helped in some cases a few hundred thousand families, but I have never
met a person like my husband in his sincerity and honesty.”199
Chung easily carried on the role her brother had played in recognizing Tai
Young’s talents and nature to work in a professional/social career that might well change
society. Chung urged and supported her choice of attending law school; he took care of
their four children when she was preparing for the Bar exam; he assisted her when she
worked on amendments for family law; and he willingly sent her to the United States for
'"ibid., p. 27. She meant that she had helped many families as a family lawyer.
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further studies, without succumbing to any strains on their marriage that would challenge
or destroy what they shared together. He was proud of her accomplishments and
especially applauded equality and justice for women, mainly because of his exposure to
Western education and Christianity. From her husband, Tai Young learned much of life
and all of what it is to be a caring and good man: as a loving husband, he supported her;
as a nurturing father, he protected her; as a teacher, he opened her eyes to social issues; as
a leader, he demonstrated ways to work for his country and his people. She was
particularly impressed with his fight for patriotic nationalism based on democratic
principles. To his dying day, his message to Lee, his children, and his friends was:
“To church, people, democracy, and unification.”200
Vocational and Lifelong Education (1936-19971
Thus, ironically, for all o f Helen Kim’s progressive views on women as
professionals, she likewise suffered a kind of tunnel vision for what possibilities women
could foster in their lives. When Korea was liberated in 1945 from Japanese occupation,
Helen offered Tai Young a job at Ewha to research traditional Korean clothing. This
offer was based on Tai Young’s education in the Home Economics Department. Law,
Helen felt, could be left to the men. Tai Young was disappointed with such a conclusion
from such an outspoken leader for women. The “rebel” graduate asked why law should
be considered a “man’s profession,” or why women’s legal problems are better handled
:ooLee, My Encounters, p. 31.
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by men instead of their own peers, or why there even is a division between the genders
when it comes to a profession. Thus, Tai Young became even more determined to study
law and work for the cause of a multitude o f unhappy Korean women who were legally
unprotected. Tai Young knew that she would seriously upset Helen’s plans, but she
remained true to her own vision. In this regard, Lee proved to be even more of a
“feminist” than her iconoclastic mentor, perhaps in large measure to the power of being
from a more modem generation, further removed from the boundaries that still built
invisible walls around her elders.
The First Korean Woman Lawyer
While studying Home Economics, Tai Young audited a special lecture on
Economic and Finance Law in 1933, given by Dr. Chung Kwang Hyun of Yonsei
University, a Presbyterian mission school for male students. For three years, she also
attended the Research Center for Economic and Finance Law, which was organized as an
extra-curricular activity, and she studied General Law there with two other Ewha
students. These two girls, however, soon dropped out, leaving Tai Young to pursue the
course on her own. Her keen interest in the law, combined with her resolute personality,
proved to be her anchor in the tide of obstacles that would meet her as she worked toward
her dream of becoming a lawyer—a dream which had captivated her since the age of 7
with her brother’s inspiration.
In 1946, a year after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonialism, Seoul
National University adopted a coeducational policy, and so, with her husband’s support,
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Tai Young entered the Law School. There, she had to compete with younger male
students who had been well-trained and surpassed her in academics, since she had mainly
directed her energies on three small children, an old mother-in-law, and a husband who
was involved in politics.
I was an older than average student and a woman and a mother of three
children at the law school where bright young men dominated.... One
day Professor Hong Jin Kee told the class that he had picked two
model essays for class to read. To my delight, one of them was
mine.... After that, I came to like him more because he had given me
self-confidence. By this time I became quite confident in my ability to
study law as to put aside the worries I always had had such as, ‘Did I
prepare enough food the family tonight?’ ‘This morning when I left
home, my daughter had a high fever, how is she doing?’ ‘My motherin-law told me to come home early, and I am staying on to study a
little bit longer.’ Worries of this sort.201
Despite her insecurity at competing with her highly disciplined, younger, and
definitely male colleagues, Tai Young took the law school entrance examination in 1946.
This was a ground-breaking act because by this time, Tai Young was already a mother of
four children, she chose a man’s profession, and she passed the test for the strictest and
most prestigious law school of the country. She was deeply tom by her decision to leave
Ewha, however. Ultimately, she opted for the law school, and Helen Kim, despite her
reservations, was so elated when her “rebel” passed the Bar in 1952 that she threw a party
with 300 invited guests.
Upon becoming a new lawyer, Tai Young applied to the Attorney General,
Kim Byong Ro, for a position as a judge, which was a common aspiration among new
201Ibid., pp. 143-144.
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applicants. The Attorney General usually assigns each interested lawyer a judge or
prosecutor position, but first had to receive routine final approval from the President.
Syngman Rhee, in this case, did not approve Lee’s application, based on this reasoning:
“In our society, it is premature to have a woman judge.... Moreover, her husband, Chung
II Hyung, is an opposition politician.” Upon hearing the President’s refusal through the
Attorney General’s office, she felt “insulted, humiliated, and angry.” These feelings
stemmed mainly from the inherent debasement of female qualification as well as outrage
at being so singled out because of her husband’s affiliation with the opposition. In
retrospect, however, she became grateful for this “failure” since it caused her to switch
her expertise to Family Law. “Although the hurt and the anger still linger in my heart
after some 35 years...I take comfort in thinking that I am the first woman who attempted
to institute social services with strict legal implications for women who had never
enjoyed such services.”202
In 1950, shortly before Lee passed her Bar exam, her brother Tae Yun
vanished during the Korean War. It was assumed that he was captured by the North
Koreans. She missed him and wanted to prove to him that she indeed became a lawyer.
She was thinking about him with affection in autobiographical sketches, “Where is he? If
he were alive he would be 89 years old. My heart aches when I think about him. It is
one thing to know that he is dead, but quite another not knowing about his life or death. I
wish to let him know that I’d become a lawyer who works hard for Korean women. He
202lbid., pp. 165-166.
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would be so happy and proud if he only knew.”203
In 1953, Tai Young returned to Seoul from Pusan, a southern port city where
she had taken refuge during the Korean War. She immediately began her YWCA
activity. The country was in total chaos, with innumerable displaced persons from
sundry locations, including men and women who were cohabiting or marrying without
proper documentation. Tai Young was anxious to promote marriage registration as soon
as possible, knowing full well that approximately sixty percent of these women were
being easily abandoned by their men and had no recourse to a just dissolution of these
“convenience” marriages. She used the YWCA to conduct talks, conferences, and
seminars for women to become aware of the possible consequences of not being legally
registered as husband and wife.
The YWCA was managed by Esther Park, a graduate of Ewha who had
studied and lived in Hawaii for many years and returned home to Korea to reorganize the
Korean YWCA. Park imported an American style of organization and efficiency, with a
penchant for improving social problems facing Korean woman. While she did not
overlook the Christian religious activities that were part of the YWCA mindset, Park was
more of a social activist Christian, focusing on the societal elements of the organization.
Park and Tai Young shared much in common and Park allowed Tai Young to use the
YWCA to propagate her ideas on Family Law. Tai Young traveled through the southern
part of the country to give speeches on this topic to women who lived in rural areas.
203lbid„ p. 23.
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Tai Young offered a down-to-earth approach to law; she simplified the
“legalese” for her “clients,” the uneducated fellow women of Korea. She avoided the
prestigious yet esoteric language spouted by the male lawyers who dominated the field,
and appreciated law professors and colleagues who could approach the law with a sense
of humanism. In her practice, she advocated mediation and reconciliation more than
divorce as a solution, because she knew that women were invariably more victimized
than men in such heart-rending situations.
For the first time in its existence, the Family Law was amended in 19S7, and
for the following 32 years, it underwent many additional amendments. Tai Young sought
rapid changes in order to benefit women quickly, but conservative male lawyers who
failed to understand the need for passing amendments expediently tended to procrastinate
whenever possible. She approached the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General,
parliamentarians, and government ministers to plead for her causes. She conducted
meetings for discussion and radio broadcast to enunciate how important it was to amend
the inequitable Family Law, and how speed was of the essence. It was not until 1989 that
Family Law received its final amendment that would break the long, deeply ingrained
barriers blocking Korean women for decades. Tai Young estimated that the new law
would help approximately twenty million Korean women.
In 1963, the President of Ewha, Kim Ok Gil (class of 1943), offered Tai
Young a Deanship to the College of Law and Political Science of Ewha. At the helm of
the college, it was felt that Tai Young could certainly elevate the standards of the faculty,
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students, and curriculum; she would inspire and challenge the students to “make it,”
whatever obstacles came their way. President Kim believed Tai Young would make an
invaluable role model. Tai Young, however, turned the initial offer down, saying that she
never intended to become an educator or a scholar. Her goal was to remain a good
advocate for Korean women who needed basic rights as human beings in general, and as
women specifically. Yet, after a little more deliberation and discussion, Tai Young
accepted the position, where she remained for eight years.
Since the College had been established ten years earlier, no student from
Ewha had ever passed the Bar. The “best” students were those who entered the English
Department (especially as English was the language of success) or the Pharmacology
College. High school girls who fell to the bottom of the ladder tended to enter the
College of Law and Political Science since they knew, even on an unconscious level, that
society would never accept them in male-dominated careers. Their morale was so low
that the students even refused to wear the school badge out of shame. Dean Tai Young
required them to wear the badge as a deliberate effort to reconstruct their self-esteem.
She also demanded that the College be moved to a more prestigious location in Main
Hall, and that a mock court and law library be instituted. All these demands were meant
to buoy the sagging spirit of these “reject” students, and all these demands were duly met.
As Dean, Tai Young also reformed the curriculum, which had been a onetrack preparation for passing the Bar. Instead, she emphasized leadership education and
lifelong learning, with an emphasis on business management that trained women as
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CPAs, presidents of small companies, and corporate shareholders. In addition, she
introduced classes for legal social work, which produced a substantial number of
successful social workers. All of these innovative and daring changes instigated
controversy. Suddenly, on a campus where married women never attended, now middleaged women garbed in Korean national dress were attending classes. Students and
faculty alike reacted with shock, as if the purity and innocence of the old school had been
stolen. This, of course, revealed more of how conservative and one-dimensional the
institution was at the time. However, Tai Young proudly declared in her book:
Despite all the difficulties and obstacles in my plans, I feel happy and
rewarded that the programs I instituted a long time ago are still
working well and have produced many successful business women
who put together their resources, time, and talent, and constructed
“Kyung Yung Kwan” [Business Management Hall] on the Ewha
campus that is used for lifelong educational purposes, too.204
Tai Young urged fellow women to work hard for equal protection under the law.
Women should not be confined to domestic domains because a woman’s
ability and intelligence are as good as those of a man. Moreover, she asserted that female
characteristics such as love for peace, honesty, and diligence are stronger than those of
men. In addition, while domestic duties are important, it is necessary to use one’s
abilities and potentials for larger purposes that are equally significant.
204Ibid., p. 193.
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Korean Legal Aid Center for Family Relations in 1956
Throughout these years, Tai Young had also established her own law practice.
She had become inundated by the number of women who came to her for help. Just as
women were shy and retiring about seeing male doctors, they were equally uncertain in
approaching male lawyers for assistance. They doubted the usefulness of their counsel not
because they were dishonest, but because women believed male lawyers could not
understand women’s issues from a woman’s perspective. Thus, in 1956, as a response to this
huge demand, Tai Young started the Legal Aid Center for Family Relations with a few
borrowed chairs, desks, and a telephone. However, “It was overwhelming, although
immensely rewarding, for me to do all this alone, so I asked around a few women’s
organizations for help...” She found cooperation from the Research Center for Women’s
Issues headed by Whang Shin Duk. This was a good example of mutual cooperation
amongst women. The Legal Aid Center for Family Relations was officially established in
1956.205
The Center continued to thrive in meeting the needs o f a growing number of
women who were unafraid to seek counsel and overcome their “shyness” about
addressing their issues in legal terms. In 1975, a woman counselor at the Center was
interviewed for the newspaper Korea Times: “Think twice before you go to court. We
are ready to serve poor women who have no way to solve their complicated legal
problems because o f poverty and ignorance of law.” The newspaper also reported that,
203Ibid., p. 177.
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during its first three years, an annual average of 180 people, mostly women, sought
counsel at the Center; in its next three years, the number increased to 5,500 individuals.
At the time of the interview, after nineteen years of service, the total number reached a
peak of 76,364 individuals seeking legal counsel for families and women.
To accommodate this growth, the Center moved six times during twenty
years. In its first difficult months of existence, they were attached to a small room in the
Research Center for Women’s Issues. Tai Young’s college roommate, Im Jong Bok,
organized a “ten-member club” to offer help in the way o f making window curtains,
cleaning, and supplying warm food and moral support for the hard workers. While the
Club began as a spirit-booster, they later successfully campaigned to raise money to
create a real office space for the Center. Tai Young also traveled to the United States to
raise money. As she toured and pleaded her case, she collected pledges of five hundred
dollars each from one hundred people to help with the construction. In addition, about
seven hundred women donated enough money to buy one hundred to one thousand
bricks. Ewha alumnae contributed small donations periodically. Finally, the building
was erected as the result of the financial and moral support of over seventeen hundred
women. The new Center’s location was dubbed “One Hundred Women’s Hall” (yo song
baik in hoe kwan), and symbolized the reconstruction of women’s lives as much as it
represented the demolition of the past.206
206Chosort Daily, May 17, 1986, on the thirtieth birthday of the Center.
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The majority o f cases handled by the Center involved divorces. Until changes
were made in Family Law, women remained unprotected in all aspects of married life.
For example, in cases of adultery, only the woman was punished; future amendments to
this law ascertained that both the man and woman would be punished, if they were guilty.
In addition, common practice was for poor couples to marry in group ceremonies, with up
to twenty couples attending a mass wedding in order to save rentals and ceremony fees.
Upon learning that divorces prevailed in marriages that occurred to “save money,” Lee
offered the Center to couples who could not afford the luxuries of a more stable, private,
and better considered wedding.207
The needs of special groups of women were continuously addressed. For
example, Tai Young recognized that the causes of many marriage problems often
developed from the unhappy relationships between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.
To ease this prevalent situation, Tai Young instituted classes for each, mothers and
daughters, jointly and singly. The main lecture centered on the generation gap that often
instigated misunderstandings between these two powerful women in the same household.
Emotional compromises emphasizing “giving in” and “understanding” were explained
and encouraged; prevention and mediation were the Center’s principles to avoid marital
break-ups whenever possible.
Tai Young also regularly scheduled lectures on property and tax rights for
women. To comfort widows, a group called “Kirogi” was instituted, while for working
207Korea Herald, October 9,1986, on the thirtieth anniversary of the “Hall” celebration.
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women, a day care center was set up. As the number of Koreans immigrated to the
United States increased, elementary English was taught to mothers and daughters who
were accompanying their men overseas. As the Center continued to receive favorable
attention from the women who received help, Tai Young was able to expand the Center’s
basic services directly to the United States; she established several offices in strategic
locations to help Koreans residing in the U. S.
All of these activities became the foundation for changes in Family Law.
As of 1991, Tai Young estimated that 378 lawyers, thirteen counselors (mostly
psychologists), seven teachers, twenty library staff members, five telephone operators,
two hundred church ministers available for free weddings, and sixty others (including
janitors, guides, and cleaning crew) work around the clock for the Center on a voluntary
or part-time basis.208
Her experience at the Center never remained untainted and uninterrupted by
the political agenda that surrounded her. In 1976, to commemorate the March 1st
Movement of 1919, Tai Young and her husband, Dr. Chung, as well as other prominent
political figures of the opposition party were involved in a political wrangle with the
ruling party and as a result Tai Young lost her law license and the husband, Dr. Chung
lost a seat in Congress. Despite their losses, however, both were satisfied because they
had steadfastly fought for justice.
20*Lee, My Encounters, pp. 239-240.
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While no longer able to practice law, Tai Young used every possible occasion
to speak about Korea in political, legal, and religious arenas. Just as Helen Kim and
Induk Pahk had conveyed images of a changing Korea to the outside world, Lee too
succeeded in drawing attention to the pressing problems that faced Korean women in
particular. From an early age, every issue that Lee addressed—from making “bean
paste” to presenting a legal case—was invariably a woman’s issue. As a student, she was
always interested in improving the ordinary lives o f millions of her fellow women
subjugated to unappreciated drudgery and toil at home. As a cultural nationalist, she
believed the first step to reform was to be modernized and/or Westernized in order to
improve every sphere occupied by Korean women. As Helen Kim and Induk Pahk did,
Tai Young used her Christian education to catapult her into the historic ranks of a
pioneer, trailblazing the future of a nation.
In June 1996,1 had an occasion to visit Tai Young Lee at her large house in
the neighborhood of the Ewha campus, my alma mater, accompanied by my sister and
Tai Young’s oldest daughter. Tai Young was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at quite
an advanced stage and could not recognize her own daughter. As we three women
entered the living room, Tai Young was coming out of her bedroom supported by a livein nurse. She looked pale, gaunt, and shaky. Tae Young and my sister used to know
each other quite well. Yet while she was walking toward us, she was mumbling
incoherently and repeated several times the question, “Did you all come to kill me?”
After all the remarkable work she had done all her life to better the condition of Korea’s
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women, Tai Young was now falling victim to a debilitating illness. Two years later, she
passed away, in 1998.
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Chapter VI
THE EDUCATION OF A GENERATION OF NEW WOMEN
Earlv Childhood Memories
Although the families of Kim, Pahk, and Lee were structured differently, their
dynamics were remarkably similar. For example, in each family, there was a close
relationship between mother and daughter, with the mother being deeply involved in her
daughter’s education, and the male members of the family did not cooperate with or
understand the ambitions of the women except for Lee’s case. Lee’s older brother, Tai
Yun and her husband nurtured and encouraged her to be a strong career-minded woman.
This chapter looks at these familial similarities and dissimilarities as well as at the
women’s shared social achievements. Kim, Pahk, and Lee set similar goals for
themselves, struggled to achieve those goals, and became leaders in education, social
work, and law under the same historical, social, and cultural contexts in which they were
intimately embedded.
One might say that if the family members are not “educated” meaning not
having been formally “schooled,” then they are not competent or qualified to “teach”
their children. The type of education discussed in this dissertation, however, assumes
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many forms of educating such as investing time and taking and showing genuine interest
in the child’s growing process by having close contact; talking with and listening to the
child; explaining how and why work has to be done in an office or on a farm. The
outstanding similarities uniting Kim, Pahk, and Lee derive directly from their mothers’
emphasis on, and gift of, education, a gift they bequeathed to each of their daughters from
early childhood.
The mothers of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young all saw special abilities, talents,
and potentials in their daughters. Dora Pak saw Helen’s intelligence and brightness in
how she performed little errands and household chores, easily surpassing her seven
siblings. On Yu Kim detected in Induk a special gift for storytelling and singing that she
showed off at the church they attended. Tai Young, an only daughter, proved to her
mother, Heung Won Kim, that she was more organized, harder working, and more
competitive than her two brothers, who received preferential treatment from society only
by virtue of their sex.
In their memoirs, the daughters reminisced about events—many of which
were ordinary daily activities—shared with or initiated by their mothers that would touch
each of their adult lives in some formative way. Helen wrote that she used to help her
mother by jumping here and there to hold down the laundered clothes against wind: “Our
family washdays were like picnics.... We sat in a circle by the stream and enjoyed the
food as though we were starving.”209 Despite this idyllic setting, Helen learned of the
209Kim, Grace Sufficient, p. 5.
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unfair amount of physical labor imposed upon her mother, while the males of the
household did not participate in such duties.
While she felt hurt by her mother’s condition, she was also proud of her
accomplishments—raising eight children, cooking, washing, laundering, raising pigs and
chickens to supplement the budget, and praying for the family’s welfare whenever she
had a free moment. Because Helen and her mother bonded not only as mother and
daughter but in a larger sense in their womanhood at the mother’s work place where job
and ordinary business of life was mingled in one, the young girl could grow to be aware
of mother’s hardship that was always resolved with ability and tenacity. These attributes
that Helen inherited and learned from her mother played a significant part in becoming a
grown up woman who became a social activist focused on improving women’s problems
and difficulties.
Induk had to learn cooking as a seven-year-old because her mother was out on
the road selling handmade little artifacts: “She bought me a cooking kettle, a few dishes,
chopsticks and a spoon,...and an abandoned kerosene can as a stove.... The first time I
tried to prepare rice I discovered that too much fire burned it; the second attempt proved
that too little fire left it sadly underdone; the third time I tried it, the rice was just
right.”210 Through these trials-and-errors on the homefront, Induk learned to become
independent; like a fatigued and frustrated colleague in the work force, she could
embrace and weep with her mother when she returned from after her long walks without
2l0Pahk, September Monkey, p. 35.
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selling her goods. Her own mother’s determination to give Induk a Christian education
continued to sustain the young girl in hardship and adversity.
Tai Young painted walls, cut trees, and repaired the roof with her mother
simply because no one else helped them: “Because of that training I received, I still work
like ‘a cow.’”211 Even as an adult, Tai Young was a capable woman around the house.
She learned endurance, perseverance, and diligence exhibited in her housework by her
mother and these traits remained with her all her life. The fact that she became the first
Korean female lawyer (1953) while raising four children and supporting a busy politician
husband testifies the work habits she learned from her mother as a young girl, which
played a part in achieving her goal.
Despite the arduous nature of women’s work, the girls’ memories always
seemed happy because they helped their mothers who, in turn, praised them for their
effort. They also realized that the core values that were learned, formed, and rooted from
early age act as a lifelong compass that guides their future actions and relationships.
Their memories fortified them to balance the inequities of their lives with the potential of
their futures.
Certainly underlying the recognition and encouragement of their daughters’
talents were the unfulfilled wishes that the three mothers had had for themselves as they
grew up. While they may have achieved a certain liberation o f their own in their struggle
2nLee, My Encounters, p. 16. At this time, cows were used to plough the rice paddies;
therefore, a person who works hard, patiently, and without complaining is nicknamed a “cow.”
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to break from their traditions and in their embrace of the new religion of Christianity,
they were left to live vicariously through their daughters. In this way, the mothers were
able not only to satisfy their own yearnings, but also, perhaps, to prove to the world that
girls were indeed capable of great accomplishments in life, even though society had so
far failed to understand and accept this fact.
In turn, Helen, Induk, and Tai Young deeply felt their mothers’ love, sacrifice,
and encouragement and tried to live up to their expectations by doing their best at the
chores given to them. Each girl grew up hearing their mothers’ unhappy stories and
developed sympathy—or empathy—for the overall condition o f women through seeing
their mothers as a role model and victim of gender prejudice. They learned to understand
the suffering of their mothers, while they themselves studied and developed ways to
compensate for it—if not for their own mothers, then for all the other “mothers” and
“daughters” to come. They were to find in their own lives that the only ways to effect
changes were through education.
The relevant questions to raise here are what produced this pattern of the three
mothers’ (they did not know each other and lived far away from each other) similar
educative significance and influence on their daughters’ accomplishments? What
parallels can one draw from the education of the three women coming from different
background both in familial and personal characteristics to the education of other women
of the same generation?
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The mothers reflected the cultural and social conditions of the era and sought
possibilities to improve and change their lives as well as their daughters’. In other words,
they acted according to the available “popular cultural currency,”212 namely, Christian
conversion that opened the possibility of education for their daughters. It was “popular”
only among those who sought it. Since they shared the common problems—absolute
prohibition for education, religion that failed to uplift their spirit, inequities between
themselves and their husbands, extreme poverty, hence a life of frustrations—they
willingly turned to the “popular cultural currency” that was available.
Fathers and Mothers as Educators
As we saw from the autobiographies of Kim, Pahk, and Lee, the presence of
male family members was hardly felt in their everyday life except in Lee’s life. In the
early 1900s when these women were children, there were several categories o f fathers.
The majority (like Kim’s father) were Confucian followers who avoided domestic chores
and child rearing because they demeaned their high-minded pursuit of ethics and morals;
others (Dora’s father, Kim’s grandfather) would punish their daughters if they caught
them studying or reading; some (Pahk’s uncle, Kim’s grandfather) were drunkards and
gamblers who were rarely at home and squandered the family wealth; and still others
(like Pahk’s husband) were incompetent, spoiled by their mothers, and generally had
concubines. Finally, some men (Pahk’s father, Lee’s father) simply died at a young age,
212Lagemann, p. 261.
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leaving their families unprotected at a time when insurance, social security or pensions
did not exist. Further, any meager savings of the deceased husband went to a male
relative, not to the widow who, in any case, was not protected by the law.
Where the father figure was distant, authoritative, or absent, the role of
caregiver, teacher, and friend was assumed by mother. The role of the daughter, in turn,
became an assistant, a pupil, and a friend. Thus, the simple but intimate personal
exchanges between mother and daughter about domestic matters became an important
daily part of growing up for Kim, Pahk, and Lee. However small the chores, the mothers
rewarded their girls for a job well done in household responsibilities, without the sense of
taken-for-grantedness that they themselves had experienced from their own relatives.
Thus, in these three families and others o f the same generation, maternal pedagogy was
simply a frequent, informal, and intimate sharing of talks and feelings between mother
and daughter. The mothers’ “curriculum” was comprised of values, morals, and attitudes
that grew from the hardships of ordinary life. The “classroom” was spontaneously
constructed and in any place where mothers and daughters interacted. This was a female
domain where their experiences could be transferred and applied to other women’s
experiences.
Although Helen’s father was alive while she was growing up (the fathers of
Induk and Tai Young were deceased), in fact he had little influence on her. For example,
it was not a very difficult decision for Dora Pak to make the life-changing decision to
baptize her children and send them off to a Christian mission school, Ewha; it was again
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Dora who gave permission to Helen to go on to college in later years despite the
opposition from father. In a society where males dominated, at least the domestic sphere
of the Christian families remained intact and allowed women to exert their special kind of
open-minded influence on their gifted offspring. The perfect opportunity for a mother
seeking her own liberation was in child rearing; there she could enact her own desire for
freedom through her daughter by opening possibilities for a different future.
Storvtelline as an Educative Tool
Storytelling as a means of educating a child in the family is particularly
important when the mother is illiterate, although intelligent. Although the three mothers
could not teach their daughters to read and write, they spent a great deal of time telling
them stories, performing religious rituals, and talking about family history. There were
no public libraries or museums for a family to visit. Therefore, storytelling was the only
medium for transmitting and evoking the past to the children who not only learn their
past in a historical context but also become curious and entertained as well. Through the
storytelling, while walking, washing, cooking, mothers assumed the role of an educator
providing the daughters with opportunities and activities through which the pupils made
discoveries about their past, their parents’ generation, and distant ancestors whom they
had never met.
Leichter asserts that “Those moments of participating in the process of
discovery are proving to be memorable and even electrifying for students and family
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members alike.”213 For example, Dora told Helen the story o f the dream she had while
pregnant with Helen o f a tiger that turned out to be a dog. The tiger symbolized power
and grandeur, meaning the child would be a boy; but the dog signified the birth of a
powerless and unimportant girl child. Dora was quick to tell Helen that these
interpretations were cultural and that she herself did not believe in them: on the contrary,
she truly loved and valued the “dog”—meaning, of course, Helen. From her mother’s
“storytelling” and interpretation of this dream, young Helen learned that a tiger (boy) is
more respected than a dog (girl) in her culture, especially as females were traditionally
responsible for domestic work which, by its nature, made them less precious, less
respected, and less desirable. Simultaneously, however, Dora’s explanation that girls
were gifts from heaven imbued Helen with reassurance and self-esteem; while traditional
Korean culture did not value girls, there was a higher power that did.
When Induk’s mother disguised her seven-year-old daughter as a boy in order
to send her to a nearby boys’ school, she explained why such a disguise was necessary.
Induk had already heard many stories from her mother before this event: how her mother
could not manage her deceased father’s money because she was a woman (and
uneducated); how her father had received a valuable education because he was the only
son (he had five sisters); how education seemed to promise a reasonably settled life; her
Christian uncle telling her mother “even a girl can do anything a son can if educated” and
so on. Through these autobiographical stories, Induk’s mother implied, if not outright
213Leichter, “Learning from Families,'’ in Reaching and Teaching All Children, p. 66.
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stated, that education was vital at any cost. The longing for education was strong and
absolute, implanted through stories of a life without education.
Tai Young also recounts stories she heard early on from her mother,
particularly one about Tae Sun. She was the daughter of a widowed neighbor who
moved away with a young son and left fifteen-year-old Tae Sun in the care of Tai
Young’s mother. She eventually married Tai Young’s brother who received his
education from Bae Jae Hakdang for boys (Ewha Hakdang’s counterpart), but a few years
later they divorced because of different educational levels (educated men became bored
with “dumb” wives). Because Tai Young loved her sister-in-law, she was saddened by
the divorce, which only emphasized her realization that women should become as
educated as men in order to become compatible as each other’s lifelong companions.
The Influence of Christianity
The new religion of Christianity appealed to many mothers like Dora, Mrs.
Pahk, and Mrs. Lee. They valued the promise of education for their daughters and sent
them to a mission school, despite criticism and fear generated by family members,
friends, and neighbors. That was the recurring theme among many families. They
believed that the girls would be educated in a humane and broad-minded way through
Christianity, something they themselves had wanted but had been denied. They believed
that within a framework of love and tolerance, their daughters would be released from a
society that lacked the very ideals they loved. They also believed that their daughter
armed with knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes acquired at the school would work for
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social progress and reform in order to better women’s lives. Because their children were
young, the mothers hoped the school would raise them as a surrogate parent, offering the
best of values and nurturance that they had tried to provide for their daughters. In
essence, school continued the education that the mothers had provided at home.
The transition was easy for the girls because they witnessed conversions to the
new faith from their own mothers. This experience prepared the young girls for any
“culture shock” they might undergo upon arriving at Ewha. For example, at age six,
Helen witnessed her mother’s conversion and noticed her transformation from fearful and
unhappy to cheerful and fulfilled. As Helen recounted the baptism, “my father and
brothers were on the men’s side, while mother and my sisters and I were on the women’s
side.... I remember a strange looking man with a very high nose and deep eyes.. .and
still queerer looking woman with light complexion, yellow hair, and very blue eyes”214
Her first contact with Western missionaries turned out to be reassuring and comforting
because Helen knew they were responsible for making her mother happy. It was also
educative because she learned the power of the “right” religion for one who sought it
willingly. Although she found the Western missionaries odd-looking, Helen would later
make her home at the boarding school with those same teachers. At age sixteen, Helen
herself had a “spiritual awakening” while praying, in which she saw a vision of multitude
of Korean women crying out for help. She felt that her mother was one of them.
2MKim, p. 13.
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Induk’s mother, On Yu, provided a more outgoing, easier approach to learning
by going to church, joining the choir, and singing hymns with her daughter. She
conveyed to her daughter that church activities were fun and Induk’s lovely voice would
make a valuable contribution. This mother’s conversion occurred after her husband died,
leaving her with no legal right to inherit; at this bleak time, a cousin introduced her to
“Jesus Christ...the way, the truth, and the life.” As Induk related, Buddha had never
offered her even a symbolic love as the one God and Jesus promised.215
Heung Won established house rules based on the Christian principle that equal
educational opportunities should apply to all her children, including her daughter, Tai
Young, as long as each child worked to maximize his or her God-given potential. This
was not to demand, but rather to encourage by role model, that the young girls become
Christians. With this promise from mother, Tai Young felt reassured that she could
utilize her talents and instincts productively for a greater good.
All three women learned from a young age how to turn these early
experiences into liberating future relationships and careers as they had witnessed the
change that conversion had made in their mothers’ lives. It was as if Christianity was the
solidification and validation of their childhood values, as well as the guidepost of their
future paths. They found a stage, looking out into the world, on which they could
perform their best in roles of their own choosing. In no other society had Christianity
2l5Pahk, p. 18.
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influenced women’s lives so profoundly and expansively as it did in Korean society of
the latter nineteenth century, and so it continues to influence the present generation.216
I am curious. Were my grandmothers who belonged to the same generation
of the three mothers also longing for the same Christian ideals—to love and to forgive—
as these three mothers? Did my ancestors have less hardship than these converted
women? Had they less courage and determination? Were they afraid of criticism and
gossip from relatives and friends? Were they even aware of what was going on? My
mother told me a story about her mother who was a good-hearted woman with unlimited
patience. She had two sons and three daughters. She practiced the three religions
(Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism) all her life as majority of women did, but at the
time of her death in 1942, she decided to be baptized by a Catholic priest. I was surprised
and enlightened by this story. My mother’s explanation was that grandmother had
wanted to be forgiven for all the sins she had committed in this world.
Perhaps my grandmother had less courage and determination than her
contemporaries had because I believe that the brave, the courageous, and the determined
people change and reform. These attributes are innate as well as they are mitigated by
the external circumstances.
I remember that my mother, a devout Buddhist, pleaded with my two older
sisters and me when we entered Ewha at different times by saying that “you receive a
good education” but “do not become Christians.” After Ewha, my oldest sister and I
2^Conversation with Dr. David K. Suh, Drew University, New Jersey, June 2001.
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became Christians and the other sister studied the Bible seriously as a student but still
remains non-Christian. My mother respected Helen Kim when she was the President of
Ewha where all her three daughters went and received a good education.
Educated Women. New Women of Ewha
By the time Helen, Induk, and Tai Young graduated from Ewha in 1918,
1917, and 1935, respectively, their intellect and personality were frilly formed. They had
been educated in the full meaning of the definitions espoused both by Cremin (more
directed process) and by Lagemann (more intuitive process). They not only acquired
knowledge and skills on one hand and values and morals on the other, but through their
effort, they also systematically transmitted and utilized what they had learned by
becoming teachers for the rest of their lives. Lagemann’s education is “a process of
interaction by which individual potential (instincts, propensities, talents) is activated,
shaped or channeled and a change (an observable or consciously felt difference) thereby
produced in the self.”217 In fact, the education of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young was
achieved through a process of interactions with women—mothers, teachers, mentors,
associates, and colleagues. These continued interactions eased them into professions,
furthered their mission, united and connected them, and helped them create a new
generation of women.
2>7Lagemann, p. 3.
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Although perhaps by Ivy-league standards Ewha was not a first-class
academic institution, it was ground-breaking in Korea. Helen, Induk, and Tai Young
were exposed to the existence of a wider world that beckoned them into its wonders.
With each school year, their teachers drew them into more complex and difficult
intellectual rigors, and tested their potential and mettle. With each triumphant solution to
a problem, their personalities and self-assurance grew. The influence of Protestant
Christianity, which taught the virtue and reward of sustained effort, cannot be
underestimated in this regard, for one could not labor only for one’s narrow world, but
for the sake of others and, especially, for the greater glory of God.
After Ewha, each woman visited the United States for advanced studies and
entered an overwhelmingly advanced Western society. In a way, it was a reprise of what
had happened when they had left their natal family for Ewha. Just as their mothers’
systematic nurturing had prepared them for that hard transition, Ewha now readied them
for these immense new challenges. They would further evolve from daughter to graduate
student to educator, good will ambassador, and lawyer. Some of their formal learning
was by being taught, and some by teaching others. Their learning was as continuous and
cumulative as it was deliberate and purposive, following Cremin’s formulation, and as
suggested by Lagemann, by osmosis. Long before the end of their lives, they had
become remarkably well-educated and created cultural patterns within the group to which
they belonged and the group exemplified their generation of women.
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The similar patterns of educational experiences and influences on Helen,
Induk, and Tai Young point out parallels with other women of the same generation. A
clear cultural pattern underlay and defined the generation to which these women
belonged. Culturally, they were “new women”—a relative term defined according to
each family, society, and culture because it requires comparison with existing criteria in
those settings—namely, what is “new” versus what is “old.” A “new woman,” as defined
in this study, is the daughter of a converted Christian mother, who became a Christian
herself and attended the first girls’ school in Korea. The majority of them received an
American higher education culminating with Ph.D. and/or M.D. degrees, and became
leaders in their chosen professions.
Differences in cultural norms and relationships between expected and
acquired roles determine what is “new” and “old.” For example, if one were to compare
American women of the Progressive generation with their Korean counterparts, it would
be possible to find commonalties between them. First, all of these women struggled
against discrimination. Second, the social reforms of the Progressive generation
paralleled those made by Korean women in education, social work, and the legal system.
Third, the new women of Korea received an American education and emulated the
organization and methodologies of American educational institutions. Fourth, the
majority of missionary teachers at Ewha were American women, thereby
“Americanizing” the Korean students and culture at Ewha.
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While the women of the Progressive generation demanded equal political and
economic rights as their male counterparts, the new women of Korea did not ask for
economic and political rights, nor did they compete with men in business or the political
arena. There was no struggle for suffrage. Only after the liberation from Japanese
colonialism were the Korean people, men and women, given an opportunity to exercise
the franchise for the first time in 1948. They never even considered the issue of sexual
independence. If the Progressive generation pioneered reforms for American women,
then the new generation of Korean women occupied a smaller, but equally potent, comer
in the history of Korean women and the country itself as educators and leaders. Korean
women were behind their American counterparts in education, exposure to the outside
world, and degree of acceptance by a male-dominated society. But they also shared
something in common. As women, they experienced discrimination; as victims of
discrimination, they have struggled to overcome it with any available resources at their
disposal. The source or degree of discrimination does not lessen or deny the universal
pain of injustice among those who suffer it. There is no differentiation, but only unity,
among those who suffer from any form of injustice. The new women built precisely this
unity among themselves in order to help others in the same predicament.
Mentors/Support Group
Mentor/mentored relationships are intensely personal human interactions
involving complex emotions, timing, and intuition. Since Helen, Induk, and Tai Young
left home at a young age, they required a group of people to guide, comfort, and
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“educate” them as their mothers had done at home, but now in a more formal, structured
way. It is especially important to remember that Helen, Induk, and Tai Young were
members of the first generation to receive a foreign culture and adopt a new religion
without any traditional standards to rely on or refer to. Because they were exposed to a
dual culture and gender bias, mentors for these women were particularly critical.
Alta Busby218 affirmed that research on mentoring supports the view that a
good mentor/mentored relationship is a rewarding and enriching experience for both
participants. The relationship builds confidence; develops new perspectives and frames
o f reference; provides a greater level of recognition and career advancement; and allows
for happiness in one’s chosen work.219 It is interesting to examine how and why Helen,
Induk, and Tai Young selected their particular mentors and how they were influenced in
light of their accomplishments.
Helen remembered her first days at Ewha in 1907 as frightening because of
her age and inexperience. When Miss Frey, the Principal, called her into her office to ask
a few questions, Helen dreaded the summons for several complicated reasons. The
Principal was a strange-looking foreign woman. Helen had been taught to keep distant
from “superiors and elders out of respect, which was almost synonymous with fear.”220
Helen found herself forced to juggle old and new cultures in order to welcome and not
2|gAlta Busby, Mentoring: A Search fo r Meaning, Ed.D. dissertation, Teachers College,
Columbia University, 1989, p. 10.
2l9Ibid., pp. 10-11.
“ “Kim, p. 23.
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fear the differences. After some initial inquiries, Helen said Miss Frey pulled her close
and told her, “Don’t be afraid.”221 Despite her cultural need to keep distant, Helen felt
care and concern from this authority figure. Later in life, Dr. Alice Appenzeller, sixth
President of Ewha, became Helen’s role model, encouraging “the liberation of mind and
spirit” from customs, traditions, narrow loyalties, and allegiances. Helen liked a broader
view of what a Christian woman can be: “an ecumenical mind.” When she was
organizing the Korean YWCA in 1922, Dr. Appenzeller encouraged Helen to break down
denominational barriers and become more open-minded in order to better the conditions
of all Korean women.222
Induk described her first night at Ewha in 1908 as initially fearful. “Very
tired and so very lonely for my mother, I wanted to cry into my pillow but remembered
Mother’s saying, “You are my son; be brave!” Feeling that she was watching me I did
my best to settle down....”223 The next morning, Induk was ushered into the Principal’s
office, reminding herself to “be brave, be brave.” Although an argument ensued over
tuition, the Principal was impressed by the articulate, feisty Korean girl who, in turn, felt
proud that she had convinced a teacher—and a foreign one at that. Induk would find an
influential mentor in 1929—a Western man.
My most unforgettable and dramatic experience was the visit to my
blind American sponsor,224 C. G. Steinhart, and his sister and her
husband. They were all my benefactors for they had put me through
“ 'Ibid.
222Grace, p. 75.
^Pahk, pp. 45-47.
“ 4A sponsor generally helps with financial aid and differs from a mentor. However, in this
case, Mr. Steinhart served as both mentor and sponsor.
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Ewha High and College in Seoul, and I met them with eighteen years
of gratitude.... Mr. Steinhart was a kindly white-haired gentleman,
wearing black glasses because of his blindness. My eyes filled with
tears when he put his arms around me and said, “Induk, I wish I could
see you face to face but since that is impossible I am grateful that I
have a light in my life even greater than physical light; I have the light
of God.... Never forget, Induk, that you have two eyes to see with.
See all you can—the sick, the hungry, the lonely and suffering people,
and be a light to them.225
Induk was more determined than ever to become “the eyes” for the poor—her
fellow sisters of Korea. Induk’s fund-raising skills, which ultimately resulted in creating
the Induk Vocational School, were reinforced by her benefactor/mentor, Mr. Steinhart,
who provided not only money for her entire schooling but also sage advice to help the
needy; thus, Induk became a profoundly effective social worker.
Tai Young was fifteen years younger than Helen. By the time she entered
Ewha in 1933 as a college student, she had already seen many Western faces. Clearly,
Western culture had already spread widely across the region since her preceding
generation. Thus, Tai Young felt no fear of unfamiliar faces when she began to live and
study at Ewha. When she entered the school, Helen Kim was the deputy principal. Tai
Young had heard that Helen was a good teacher with a good mind, a good heart, and
most important, a strong religious faith. Tai Young’s personality was slightly combative,
however, and she did not hesitate to challenge authority. During Helen’s class “Women
and Career,” Tai Young advocated for dual roles for women—marriage and career; Helen
feared this balancing act could only produce mediocrity in both. Tai Young was
^Pahk, pp. 128-129.
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propelled to prove the successful blend of both family and career, much to Helen’s proud
surprise. Helen certainly provided her with numerous “cons,” stimulating Tai Young to
rise to the challenge. As a result, Tai Young’s potential was enhanced to the point of
becoming the first female Korean lawyer and the Director of the Korea Legal Aid Center
for Family Relations, founded in 1956. Perhaps, in a curious twist, Tai Young also
proved to be a bit of a mentor to Helen in showing her that the two worlds would not
necessarily result in mediocrity.
These women’s choices of mentors—coincidental or purposeful—reflected
their personalities. Appearing shy and self-effacing but strong, Helen required a similar
mentor; gutsy and “brave” Induk bonded with a male mentor; and Tai Young adopted
Helen as her mentor after an intellectual challenge. These relationships were encouraged
and quickly established by the school. The missionaries were aware of their important
roles, taking charge of young girls as surrogate mothers, teachers, preachers, and friends.
Dr. Appenzeller’s mentorship with Helen Kim was an excellent example of what these
relationships ultimately provided for their charges. A new woman with a new education
and a Christian background was a suspect and a target for social criticism. If she adopted
a narrow denominational approach, the public (especially men) would confirm her
inferiority. Once Dr. Appenzeller noticed Helen’s hard work, earnest faith, and sense of
mission, however, she commented (by quoting Shakespeare): “Some are bom great,
some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.... You are in the
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third category.”226 Such praise essentially applied to all three women: their school
mentors recognized the destiny of their mentored, just as years earlier, the women’s
mothers intuited and encouraged them onto the same paths in an informal way.
Lagemann provides insight into these special relationships: “To entrust
oneself to the guidance o f an older women was acceptable, even praiseworthy; to pattern
oneself after an older woman required only the kind of educational acumen that girls
were expected and trained to have.”227 It is a surrogate of the mother-daughter
relationship.”228 The mentor/mentored relationship, if well-matched in personality,
compatibility of purpose, and respect for each other, can play as crucial a role as that of
the mother-daughter bond formed in the early stage of life in terms of educative influence
as well as emotional support. Potentially, a mentor has the power to be a surrogate
mother. In addition to this function, the mentor/mentored relationship provided another
type of education for Kim, Pahk, and Lee through guidance, advice, sponsorship, and
friendship for the rest of their lives. The mentors found resources for further studies, job
placement, and opening channels to meet like-minded people for future contacts for “a
web of human relationships.” All these experiences and interactions bonded mentors and
mentored in a process o f mutual education and respect just as mothers and daughters had
been bonded in the home.
“ Grace, p. 93.
“ Lagemann, p. 273.
“ Ibid.
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Female Friendship
Equally important as mentor relationships were “female friendships” at
Ewha.
The first Ewha teachers were American women of the nineteenth century who
were accustomed to having close female friendships or companionships.230 Under the
guidance of American women missionaries, young girls, ages 12 to 15, on Ewha’s all-girl
campus were encouraged to establish “big sister/little sister” relationships. This would
foster academic and emotional comfort for young girls unaccustomed to this new reality.
The younger-older girls bonded like miniature mentors and mentored, playing significant
roles that sometimes turned into lifelong friendships. These relationships provided for
networks, supported causes, addressed female issues, and stabilized emotions.
The Ewha women established their own tradition that Ewha president should
be a single woman. After the missionaries handed over to Korean women, the first
President was Helen Kim from 1939 to 1961; the second President, Okgil Kim, assumed
the post from 1961 to 1979; the third was Yui Sook Chung from 1979-1995(7). They
were all unmarried women. Only as recently as the mid-1990s did married women begin
to be considered for that post.
“ ’in 1996,1 interviewed a few Ewha women in Korea who were contemporaries of Helen and
Induk. One of them, Pauline Kim, told me that when she entered Ewha in 1908, the “love group” was
encouraged by teachers. Contrary to its name, it had nothing to do with sexual affairs or lesbianism.
“ “Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between
Women in Nineteenth Century America,” Signs I (1975): 1-30.
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As accomplished as they were in their professions, they needed
companionship and emotional fulfillment in their lives. Helen Kim had a life long
relationship with Jong Ai Lee, Ewha’s new woman, for nearly thirty years until Lee’s
death in 1954. Induk relied on her two daughters, Iris and Lotus for emotional support
and companionship; while Tai Young had a full life as a wife, mother, and lawyer.
The new women of Ewha placed their friends in appropriate jobs, but many
remained on the campus because the missionary teachers needed them. Korean
organizations in the 1920s and 1930s generally did not hire “new women” unless they
were Christian organizations, all-girls schools, or hospitals needing female nurses.
Therefore, mutual help amongst women to find jobs through networking was a critical
first step to infiltrate the male-dominated job market.
The Woman’s Movement
Was the woman’s movement in Korea initiated by the women of the New
Generation in the early twentieth century? This dissertation argues that it was. When a
collective consciousness is raised high enough to result in a movement, particular groups
and social sectors begin to address issues that require improvement and resolution. The
main issue facing these new women was the dearth of opportunities that allowed them to
use their God-given potential simply because they were deprived of education. They
demonstrated how women’s so-called “inferiority” had nothing to do with their mental
dullness, lazy habits, narrow attitudes, and slow emotional development. It had
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everything to do with how women were mistreated and misunderstood by a maledominated society and a repressive political and social system.
The woman’s movement centered around three purposes: (1) conversion to
Christianity, which served as a beacon in the dark lives of women; (2) release from past
social injustices and inequalities; and (3) ongoing contributions to maintain national
freedom and liberation from colonialism. Therefore, any movement promised to be
Christian, Woman-centered, and Cultural Nationalist.
The educational issue among the new women was neither to demand more
schools nor to blame men politicians for the discriminatory system. They wished to
transmit what they had learned to other women first by advocating educational
opportunities in churches, community centers, and especially homes through reading and
conversations on familiar topics among family members and friends. The new women
wished to educate “old woman” to empower themselves through literacy, diligence, and
non-superstitious behavior. Helen campaigned in the countryside for an all-female
audience; Induk founded a vocational school for girls who were too young to marry and
too poor to go to college; Tai Young provided free legal aid to impoverished women.
Their actions stemmed from their belief that a sensible woman would make a sensible
wife and mother. They did not promote the notion that women’s liberation was only
achieved by working outside the home and competing with men for higher wages. They
were not “feminist” by today’s American standards. Rather, they shared a common
female consciousness on a basic, grass-roots level, and tried to solve the problems facing
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women on practical, functional, and realistic terms. They recognized that a radical
opening of the closed system of Confucianism needed to begin with a gradual and slow
force, which would only intensify once the first pull in a new direction took hold.
The woman’s movement was supported by contemporary men who were
Christian converts themselves and often Western-educated. This support was articulated
in print by the editor, Dr. So Jai Pil at Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent), who
acknowledged men’s guilty role: “Women are not inferior to men. Men are so
uncivilized that they mistreat women without any humane considerations or just cause.
Isn’t it a sign of primitiveness that they oppress women merely by their physical
superiority?”231
In 1908, the first journal for women, YoJaJi Nam, was published—ironically
by men. In it, they tried to raise women’s awareness that education was not confined to
school, and that common sense suggested abolishing superstition and improving home
life. Written in a vernacular that women could read (rather than in Chinese, which they
had not been allowed to learn), this publication focused on issues relevant to women.
The founder of Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent), Dr. So Jai Pil, and a non-political
group of men leaders from different fields (Yi Kwangsu, Kim Sdngsoo, Ch’oe Namsdn,
Chang Tdksu) were considered “cultural nationalists.” They believed that in order to
fight colonialism, the Korean populace needed a new education and a new culture that
231Tongnip Sinmun (The Independent), Editorial, April 21,18%, requoted from Yung-Chung
Kim, Women o f Korea (Seoul, Korea: Ewha Woman’s University Press, 1976), p. 214.
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addressed all citizens and focused on renewing national character.232 While the men
supported women’s causes in the all-inclusive philosophy of cultural nationalism, women
specifically focused on women, even though they knew that liberating men’s minds was
part o f the process. Nevertheless, the new women liked and appreciated what these men
advocated, and Helen, Induk, and Tai Young became lifelong colleagues of these men.
While acknowledging the cultural nationalists’ sincerity about women’s
issues, Kenneth Wells comments on these men’s attitudes:
They were interested in class and gender as part of their attack on
Confucianism...but self-reconstruction [for the country] was not a
program of liberation of classes or women.... The movement was
pioneered by high-class males, with few exceptions, the lower classes
and the women were to be freed from ignorance and indolence for the
sake of the nation. They were to be nationalized.233
If the motivation of the male leaders was not as pure as the new women would have
liked, they nevertheless felt empowered by being included in this important endeavor to
liberate themselves from colonialism.
To the generation of new women, the shared issues—a new faith, service to
less fortunate women, and participation in the national movement—were founded on the
experiences and purposes they shared. Helen, Induk, and Tai Young did not choose their
particular careers by chance. Rather, their common purpose played a part. Their
mother’s influence during childhood education, their formal school education at Ewha,
232For cultural nationalism, see A Korean Nationalist Entrepreneur: A Life History o f Kim
Songsu, 1891-1955 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
233Kenneth M. Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction
Nationalism in Korea, 1896-1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1990), pp. ix-x.
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232
their vocational education in later years, and the educationally significant relationships
profoundly impressed their consciousness and directed them into careers that would help
other women form a female consciousness. While to American women of the
progressive generation “social feminism” made sense for institutional reforms, “cultural
feminism” is the most apt characterization for the Korean new women.
Educative Style
The educative style of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young was more intelligent than
intellectual. According to Hofstadter, “Intelligence is an excellence of mind that is
employed within a fairly narrow, immediate and predictable range; it is manipulative,
adjustive, unfailingly practical quality.... [whereas] intellect...is the critical, creative, and
contemplative side of mind.”234 The three women engaged in, moved through, and
combined their experiences within the framework of clearly stated goals without undue
philosophical contemplation. In short, their educative style was practical, intuitive, and
religious—meaning self-reflective through prayer and meditation, but with a utilitarian
vision for change. Their educative style was directly correlated with the educational
opportunities and experiences available to them and other women of the same generation.
They found educative encounters in personal relationships and reached out to
those who could teach them and whom they could teach. Through church activities and
boarding school life, Helen, Induk, and Tai Young and other new women enlarged their
^Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 25.
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233
circle of friends. Friends of similar persuasion were readily found to promote social
causes. From these experiences, the three women developed “people skills” which had
been absent in the lives of Korean women for lack of opportunities. Through women’s
organizations and YWCA, they reached public and professional arenas where their voices
were heard. They expressed their strong opinions and articulated their suppressed
feelings for themselves and for others.
Korean women never had voice until then. It had been silenced by history and
culture. To be “talkative” was prohibited. It was an enforced silence. Without
expressing their opinions and feelings they remained timid and self-conscious. At long
last, Ewha women, new women found places where they could speak and their voices
were affirmed and supported by fellow Christian women. They defied the cultural norm,
“right speech for a woman is silence.” By speaking out they became empowered. If men
did not listen, at least there were women who listened. I remember my mother who
remained “old woman” (believer of the three main religions) often referring to a talkative
woman or a woman who spoke well with conviction and persuasive bent as a “Christian
woman” irrespective of her religion. When she was a young woman, she received a visit
or two from a “Bible woman” who generally had good facility for talking in a persuasive
manner.
Above all, through their experiences, the three women and the other women of
their generation were always aware that they were women. They received a female
education; they helped other women; they supported nationalism as “auxiliary subsidiary
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234
status,,23s to their male counterparts. Their professional growth had not caught up with
male counterparts except in the field where female workers were perceived to do better
such as teachers, church workers, and nurses. True female education—independent from
fathers, husbands, and brothers—was achieved through interactions and relationships
with women -mothers, sisters, teachers, friends, room-mates, mentors, associates,
colleagues—and through their faith in Christianity that pervaded all other institutions of
which they would be a part.
What mattered to Helen, Induk, and Tai Young also mattered to the rest of the
same generation because they shared and overcame the cultural and social constraints
within the same socio-cultural contexts of the era. Thus, the three women celebrated in
this study represent women of the same generation at Ewha who also achieved their
mission: to receive an education for themselves and then apply it to the cause of
liberating women from unjust system through their ability, purpose, and faith. On a
broader, cross-cultural scale, the differences in culture notwithstanding, between the
progressive women of America and the new women of Korea in the twentieth century,
the stories they tell are essentially the same. Women’s status in both societies was raised
primarily by women who sought education as a method of social reform.
William Tierney states that the purpose of the author of a life history is more
than to unearth untold tales. Rather, one needs to interpret, construct, and re-create
^Jo an M. Jensen and Lois Scharf, “Introduction,” in Decades o f Discontent: The Woman's
Movement, 1920-1940 (Edited, with an Introduction, by Lois Scharf and Joan M. Jensen) (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 9.
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235
because “life history is more than collective memory. Ideology and social and cultural
frames help define how we see the past and construct its stories... In this re-creation, the
past histories help construct the future.”236 Rational empirical evidence is not clearly
provided in an individual’s life history because a singular view and a definite conclusion
of that individual’s behavior or reactions do not provide a complete or perfect picture.
However, the stories they tell us are the empirical evidence. The story, however, should
accommodate for multiple interpretations by both the life historian as well as the reader.
Although Tai Young was fifteen and eighteen years younger than Helen and
Induk, respectively, I included her in the same generation, which in this study is defined
as the “interior time” in which experiences are shared for the same cause or ideas by a
particular group of individuals. Simply because people are bom at the same time and
grow into youth, adulthood, and old age together does not imply that they are of the same
“generation” of patterns of experience, thought, and expression. What if political,
cultural, social, and educational issues are shared and agreed upon by twenty-year-olds
and forty-year-olds? Certainly, events occur to a generation, which are dictated by
biology (i.e., female fertility, diminishing memory), but a hue generation of ideas shares
the mentality of an era that is not bound by chronology. The generation of new women
that I describe in this study was of a generation sharing experiences, ideas, and
236WilIiam W. Tierney, “Undaunted Courage: Life History and the Postmodern Challenge,”
in Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook o f Qualitative Research (pp. S37-S53)
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000).
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236
expression, even though each woman had a unique personality, family structure,
relationships, style, and even age.237
One notices differences in Helen, Induk, and Tai Young’s relationships with
male members of their families. Helen and Induk, older than Tai Young by 15 and 18
years, had a harder time in receiving moral and emotional support from their male relatives,
while Tai Young enjoyed her older brother, Tai Yun, and her husband who nurtured and
encouraged her to become a strong career woman. By Tai Young’s time, Korean society
had evolved to accept foreign influences from missionaries and the Japanese colonialists on
women’s status. Also, her brother’s and husband’s “modem” education had played a role
in their attitude towards women. Tai Yun went to Bae Jae Hakdang for boys, the
counterpart of Ewha; Tai Young’s husband received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Drew
University, Madison, New Jersey. Both men were devout Christians.
New women such as Helen, Induk, and Tai Young were caught between two
cultures. Despite their awesome accomplishments, strength of their personality, and deep
faith, they had moments of oscillation between the traditional values and the new culture
of the Protestantism they adopted. In a changing world at a crossroad where the old
culture converged with the new, they were not afraid o f learning the new. They had gone
through many transitions, overlappings, cycles, circles, and also contradictions. At every
juncture, they had willingness to learn. They were growing into their lives knowing and
237For further studies on this topic, see Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology o f
Knowledge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 19S2. Chapter VII, “The Problem of Generations,” is
particularly helpful in defining generations.
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237
unknowing the familiar and the unfamiliar. Until the end, their life experiences were
neither static nor definitive.238
Helen, Induk, and Tai Young achieved beyond what they had expected by
liberating themselves from traditional conventions and in each case, education enabled them
to do it. By pursuing their goals, each woman understood the limitations as women.
Ironically, because of the limitations, they thought and acted in a manner that was acceptable
and available to women who shared common values and sought similar goals. They stayed
in their boundaries. The women of the new generation were taught the same way as Helen,
Induk, and Tai Young and learned the same way as they did through interactions and
relationships with wide range of women. The education of new women was possible because
of their abilities in part and also because of the historical moment o f the country.
As Willa Cather wrote in O Pioneers!, “There are only two or three human
stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened
before.” The stories of Helen, Induk, and Tai Young are the stories o f “revolutionaries”
who transcended time and culture; who rose past their individual differences to represent
and personify thousands of women whose voices were not as forceful; who struggled for
causes higher than themselves—liberation of women from the unjust system, liberation of
the country from the unjust colonialism, and liberation of spirit with deep faith in
Christianity; and who succeeded to claim their share of history. Their stories reflect the
process of that struggle called “Life.”
“ ‘For further study, see Mary Catherine Bateson, Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture
and Generation in Transition (New York: Ballantine Books, 2000).
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Appendix A
Helen Kim (1899-1970)
Father
Mother
/ Kim \
Jin Yun
married in 1870
Dora Pak
from p evious
mar iage
son
son
daughter)
sister
Ellen
sister
Marion
Helen
irothei
John
brothei
Paul
[youngest daughter]
In 1931, upon returning home
from the U.S., she guested
many friends in her house.
One of them was Lee Chungai.
Lee \ [female companion]
.Chungai/died in 1954.
(daughter
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Appendix B
Induk Pahk (1896-1980)
died (1902)
Father \ of cholera
Mother
Pahk
Young Ha
Kim On Yu
married (1920)
divorced in 1930 because
he had a concubine
Woon Ho
Ins
(bom 1921)
disguised as
a boy (1903)
Lotus
(bom 1923
or 1924)
v
all died
before Pahk's
birth in 1896
A drunkard who
mistreated sister
and niece, Induk.
Later converted to
Christianity, he
became nice to the
women relatives.
died (1902)
of cholera
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Appendix C
Tai Young Lee (1914-1998)
/
Vdied in 1915 when Tai Young
Mother
/F a th e r ^ was one yCar 0id_________
Kim
Heung Won
Lee \
Heung Guk \
lae Suit
(19011980)>
married in 1920, son \
Tai Yun
/ son \
Tai Heup
Tai Young
married in 1936
Bom 1902.
Surrogate
father to
Tai Young.
Jin Sook
Sun
Sook
Mee
Sook
Dai
Chul
240
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Appendix D
Year
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Society
KAEHWA PERIOD (PERIOD O F ENLIGHTENMENT)
1876
Treaty o f Kangwha: the first treaty
with Japan, resulting in opening
the borders to outside world
1882
Treaty o f Commerce with the U.S.
1883
Mrs. L.B. Baldwin
donates money to
WFMS
Dr. Goucher donates
$2,000
1884
MFMS sends the first
woman missionary,
Mary F. Scranton
188S
Exchange o f representatives
between Korea (Min Yongik) &
the U.S. (L. Foote)
First modern hospital “Kang He
Won” established with Dr. Allen in
charge
1886
First student in
Scranton’s living
room on May 31
1887
Ewha students
increased to 7
Name Ewha (Pear
Blossom) given
Treaty with France
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Year
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
1888
Treaty with Russia and Italy
1889
Students increased to
24
First Korean female
teacher hired for
writing
1890
Female MD R.
Sherwood arrives to
train girls
1893
Students to 37
1894
Scranton begins
evangelical work
1895
Born in September
Embroidery, sewing
lessons
1898
1903
“The Independent” published
The first Catholic cathedral opened
Bom in February
1900
1902
The Kabo Reform
The Sino-Japanese War
“Dan Balyong” (topknot) instituted
1896
1899
Society
First female MD
(American educated),
Esther Pak
Loses father and
brother to cholera
Disguised as a boy to
go to school
First long-distance telephone
between Seoul and Inchon (25
miles distance)
Treaty with Denmark
Cholera epidemic
“Loving Society”
formed
Korean YMCA begins
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Year
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
1904
Society
Korean Red Cross begins
1906
Baptised and named
Helen
First Ewha graduate,
Ha Ransa, to receive
a BA from the U.S.
1907
Entered Ewha
Students increase to
104
1908
Enter Ewha
Begins new policy
applicant be over 10
years old and 25
married women were
admitted
1909
Scranton dies
JAPANESE COLONIALISM
1910
Begins college-level
courses
1913
Graduates from
middle school with
honors
1914
Experiences spiritual
awakening.
Determined to
dedicate her life to
liberation o f women
1915
To help flood victims
by foregoing meat
Japan annexes Korea and
confiscates Korean textbooks
Japanese instruction
compulsory
Bom
Kindergarten started
World War I
First college
graduation with 3
graduates
Japanese anthem enforced
N>
4*.
u>
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Y ear
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
1916
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Graduates from Ewha
College. Only one
graduate remains at
Ewha as teacher.
1918
Graduates from Ewha
College. Remains at
Ewha as teacher.
Writes Ewha school
song (music and
lyrics).
1919
Falls ill.
Participates in March,
arrested, imprisoned
for S months.
1920
Organizes Ewha’s
“Evangelical Group
o f Seven,” which
tours the country
1921
1922
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Studies abroad: U.S.
Society
Students increase to
310
Library service
begins
World War 1 ends.
Gives first public
speech at her church
on Thanksgiving.
From 1919 to 1921,
no commencement
due to difficulties
National Independence Movement,
March 1, 1919
Korean Women's Patriotic
Association
Dong A Daily: first publication
Japanese force Japanese
curriculum; prohibit Korean
history and geography
At age 7, participates
in a speech contest;
the youngest
contestant on “I am a
daughter”
Sets up Korean
YWCA
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Home Economics
Dept.
Kindergarten
completed
Music recital
First Korean Art Exhibition
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Y ear
1925
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Returns to Korea
Director of
dormitories
1926
1928
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Society
Indoor athletic
competition
All Korean journalists’ meeting
First skating rink
Korean Alphabet Day
Studies abroad: U.S.
Foreign trips abroad:
Shanghai, Jerusalem
Works at Student
Volunteer Movement
for Foreign Missions
At age 14, attending
Soong Duk School.
Wins first award in
speech contest:
“Equal Opportunities
for Boys and Girls”
1929
Ewha College News
Sheet published
First performance of
“Merchant of
Venice”
1930
Back to U.S. for
further study
Returning home via
Europe
“Truth, Goodness,
Beauty” as school
motto
Instruction for typing
Divorce upon
returning
1931
1932
Receives Ph.D. from
Teachers College,
Columbia University
as the first Korean
Ph.D.
Works at various jobs
to earn a living
Japan attacks Manchuria
Enters Ewha College
English House
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Year
1933
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Vice Principal o f
Ewha
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Audits Economic and
Finance Law at
Yonsei University
1935
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Music Hall, Gym
Awarded first prize in Nationwide women’s
Nation o f Women’s
basketball
speech contest on
competition
“The Doll’s House”
Museum
Society
Korean language standardization
First movie with voice
Glee Club
1936
Acting principal
Taking Korea to
America
1937
1938
Graduate from Home
Economics
50lh Anniversay
Tennis Court
First Korean Olympic winner in
marathon, Son Ki-jong
Marries Americaneducated Chung
Il-hyong
School song changed
to Japanese
Enforcement of Japanese at
schools
Japanese emperor worship
Returns home
Starts Duk Wha
School
Japanese language instruction
1939
Assumes
principalship
1940
Keeps Ewha from
Japanese pressure
Japanese literature
enforced
Missionary teachers
leave Korea
1943
Establishes Ewha
Foundation with
donations
English instruction
prohibited
World War II
Korean names changed to Japanese
246
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Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Year
1945
Changes Ewha to
university status
1946
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Dept, o f Public
Information under
American Military
Government
Back to the U.S.
Stays for 10 years
raising funds
1948
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Enters Law School at
Seoul National
University
Attends U.N. in Paris
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Society
Becomes Ewha
Women’s University
Liberation from Japanese
colonialism
Opening of Ewha
Medical Center
Dr. Syngman Rhee as leader of
liberated Korea
Application for
Teachers College
Ewha medical team
to rural area
Compulsory elementary education
General election
Syngman Rhee as president of
Korea
Graduate school
Korean War begins
KOREAN WAR
1950
Becomes Dean o f
Graduate School
Organizes “Korean
Women College
Graduates”
1951
Temporary campus o f Government in Pusan
Ewha in exile in
Pusan
1952
Passes bar exam
1953
Seminar, conference
at YWCA
Return to Seoul
Government returns to Seoul
Demilitarized Zone at Panmun Jom
247
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Year
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Society
1956
Begins Legal Aid
Center for Women
Great revival meeting
on campus
First TV station (HLKI)
1957
Doctorate in Law
Research at Southern
Methodist University
New library opens
English Dept,
translates Jane Eyre
into Korean
First standard Korean dictionary
published
1958
New library
dedicated to Helen
Hall
Life-size statue on
campus
Research Center for
Korean Culture
I960
1961
Retirement
1963
Receives Ramon
Magsaysay Award
Dean of Law School
1969
International
Foundation for Ewha
graduates in U.S.
Appointed mother of
the year
1970
Death
First women’s
orchestra of Ewha
Student demonstration, 4/19
Uniform for students
Okgil Kim becomes
new president
Military coup d’etat, 5/16
Awards first
doctorate degree
President Park Chung Hee
Park-Nixon summit
Helen scholarship
fund
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Year
1972
Helen Kim
(1899-1970)
Induk Pahk
(1896-1980)
Induk Institute of
Design
1975
Tai Young Lee
(1914-1998)
Ewha (School)
(1886)
Society
Awarded World
Peace for Law
Awarded Ramon
Magsaysay Award
1977
Publishes The Cock
Still Crows
1980
Death
1981
Honorary degree
from Drew
University, N.J.
1984
World Methodist
Peace Award
Legal Service Award
1998
Director o f Legal Aid
Center for Women
since 1956 until her
death
249
250
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251
Conversations with a number o f Ewha professors who knew the three subjects well. (At
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