Week 3 - Ewha’s History
Hey guys!
Sorry for the break last week - it was Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok) so I went down to Daegu to spend the break with my extended family. There was so. Much. Food.
Anyhow, while deciding what to write about this week, I realized I never really talked about Ewha’s history and legacy…which is a shame considering I’ve been posting about the school for over a year now.
Mary F. Scranton
Long, long ago, (AKA 1886 - this is why a lot of Ewha clothes/gear have just 1886 written on them), an American missionary by the name of Mary F Scranton began teaching women from her home in Jeong-dong, Seoul. It was then called the Ewha Hakdang (traditional Korean-style school), with the name “Ewha”, meaning “pear flower”, being bestowed upon Scranton’s small establishment by the then-Emperor Kojong in 1887. It was the first modern educational establishment for Korean women at the time.
Ewha began with only one student, but by 1925 finally became Ewha College with established courses and different majors, and went on to be the first institute of higher education for women in Korea.
Those aren’t the only firsts, however. Ewha, after its move to its current Sinchon campus in 1925-1945, became the first government-accredited four-year university in Korea in 1945. This was the same year that Korea obtained independence from Japanese occupation during World War II.
Time went on, and Ewha continued to claim even more firsts - establishing the world’s first engineering college for women in 1996, being the first in Korea to offer women’s studies courses (in an otherwise very conservative time and country), and so forth.
For these reasons, it’s deeply ingrained in Korean people that Ewha is by far the leading Women’s university in not just Korea, but also on an international scale. I’m proud to say that I’m a student of Ewha, because it does a fantastic job of empowering Korean (and all) women. We’re taught to be fearless and unafraid of limitations or disadvantages we might experience elsewhere. It is in this mentality that it’s called Ewha Womans Univerity, rather than Women’s, to honor the university founder’s belief that every individual woman is worth respecting, rather than lumping them all under one word, “Women”. It may not make sense grammatically, but symbolically, I think it’s an honorable tradition.
Ewha Womans University Archive Building
When I first came to Ewha, I didn’t care too much for my university’s history. I felt I’d exhausted my loyalty and fervor for my school legacies when I was at UNC, but after coming to Ewha and visiting the Ewha Archive Building (on the way up to the Hanwoori Dorms), I was blown away by the sheer historical importance of this school. During wars and eras when women didn’t have the opportunities we’re so easily given today, Ewha was a testament to the belief that women deserved equal educational opportunities, empowerment, and the opportunity to flourish.
I sound so ridiculously patriotic in this post, but trust me, it took me two years of studying here to slowly build up this much love for my university in Korea. Not all aspects are perfect about Ewha, especially today with disputes between the student body and the administration, but we fight for what we think is right for this school that provides such opportunities for us.
Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery
Before I end, I wanted to just mention a somewhat related personal anecdote! This last year, I had to visit the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary’s Cemetery for a class. I went without expecting much from a cemetery, but was surprised when - behold - it was absolutely beautiful, and actually had a tombstone honoring none other than Mary Scranton herself, in addition to Yonsei’s founder, Underwood, and other influential foreign missionaries. I stood in front of her grave for a while, silently thanking her for what she did for higher education in Korea, humbled by this small yet meaningful trip.
Mary Scranton’s Tombstone
I hope you enjoyed this long post, and I’ll post again next week~ Thanks for reading!!
