Miriam Reed

Tag: Ewha University

  • Seoul, Korea Tuesday 12 November 2019

    Seoul, Korea
    Tuesday  12 November 2019

    Today, we visited the $40-chocolate expert, a professor at Yonsei University, and he was well worth the $40 and then some. Learned all sorts of things and was informed of all of my typing errors (very painful—it is a draft!) but many improvements and new material offered for “Korea 1908”—and answers to questions I had no way of locating.  He vetted only the first half,  and next Monday we return for additional information. For “Korea”1908,” this trip has proved invaluable.

    We went first to Severance Hospital, a glass-and-steel white  behemoth that extends skyward farther than the eye can see; within an equally white Christmas tree and Christmas decorations were arranged. Outside were more naturally colored flowers, so many, photos that I forgot to take. The temperature here is surprisingly mild and today sunny. Just below the Hospital building is another towering white behemoth, headquarters for the War on Cancer, obviously sustained by unimaginable sums of money.

    It is interesting the extent to which something can grow from a small act and one person’s vision. The Methodist Episcopal Church had become involved in missionary work early in the game, and their Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society had been supporting missionary work in China and Japan with scant evangelical success. Yet the WFMS of Revenna, Ohio, met regularly to champion the cause, despite any visible evidence of heathen regeneration. One “dear old lady,” whose name and background story are not included in the records I have available, felt strongly, for whatever reason, that Korea should be a field of endeavor for the Methodist missionaries and, specfically, that the girls and women of Korea should be given care. She presented to the Society “a “small sum of money dedicated to God” that she wished to be a nucleus drawing sums sufficient to send Methodist missionaries to Korea. Only one year later, Mary F. Scranton was appointed to the Korean field, and in June 1885, she reached Seoul. In Seoul, she opened a small school for girls that ultimately became Ewha Unversity, now the largest university in the world for women. From such small beginnings—and yet we do not even know the name of the “dear old lady.”

     

     

  • Wednesday 7 November 2018

    Wednesday, 7 November 2018

    The much anticipated day arrived to view the Women’s History Archives at the great Ewha University, the largest educational institution for women in the world. The campus ranges over many hills (you might call them mountains). and those girls and women surely get all the exercise they need just walking between classes. The campus is attractively planned and planted, and it must be as stunning in the spring as it is on this fall day when I visited.

    The archives are housed in a reconstructed traditional Korean house with beautiful wood everywhere. But it seemed a wasted long morning offering me no information, certainly that I did not already know from the internet. 

    In the afternoon, my research quest was happily redeemed during my visit to the Seoul History Museum. As with all the municipal buildings, the Museum is a new and cutting edge architectural wonder, inside and out, sensitive to human need for clean beautiful space – but spaces difficult to photograph – so much glass and glare – but beautiful to be within. Excellent exhibitions, and exhibits and materials on Seoul in the nineteenth century. Isn’t that why I am here? As an American, it was gratifying to see Korea acknowledges the contributions of the Western missionaries and the advisors to the Joseon government, those who came to Seoul in the late nineteenth century. (It does not quite offset Theodore Roosevelt’s actions, but that is for another discussion.) Old photographs were carefully maintained. The staff was most helpful, and this museum visit alone has made my trip to Korea worthwhile. At night, which is when I left, for they are open until eight, that beautiful building glows.

                                 

    In Seoul, Koreans bump into you and never apologize. It seems to be their way. But all in all, I have found the Korean people in Seoul to be kind and always helpful when I needed directions. And I am always needing directions. Travel always brings surprises and the unexpected. The Seoul skyline at night is splendid.