Alice Rebecca Appenzeller

Life

Alice Rebecca Appenzeller was born in Seoul on November 9, 1885. Her father was Henry Appenzeller, a Methodist missionary who had arrived in Joseon that same year, and her mother was Ella Dodge Appenzeller. She is known as the first American baby born in Joseon, and Ewha Womans University describes her as the first Western woman born in Korea. Her younger brother, Henry Dodge Appenzeller, later served as principal of Pai Chai Haktang.

After spending her childhood in Seoul, she went to the United States for her education. She graduated from the Shippen School in 1905 and from Wellesley College in 1909, and later earned a master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught at her alma mater, the Shippen School, until 1914.

In 1915 she was appointed a missionary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church and came to Korea, where she taught English and history at Ewha Haktang, the school where her mother had worked alongside Mary Scranton. In October 1922 she became the sixth principal (the school's chief administrator) of Ewha Haktang. In April 1939 she stepped down as president and was named president emerita; she was succeeded by Helen Kim (Kim Hwal-lan). As relations between the United States and Japan deteriorated, she returned to the United States in November 1940. She came back to Korea in 1946, after liberation. On February 20, 1950, while leading chapel (a school worship service) at Ewha, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. Her funeral, a public funeral organized by representatives of various civic organizations, was held at Chungdong First Methodist Church, and she was buried at the Yanghwajin Foreign Missionary Cemetery.

Ministry and Achievements

• Reorganization as a college: In 1925 she reorganized the college department that her predecessor, Lulu Frey, had established at Ewha Haktang into Ewha Womans College (Ewha Yeoja Jeonmun Hakgyo) and became its president. The college initially offered literature and music departments, and a home economics department was added in 1929. This opened the way for Korean women to receive specialized professional education in particular fields of study.
• Teacher training and accreditation: She sent Korean teachers—Ewha graduates who were teaching at their alma mater—to study in the United States to develop their expertise. She also obtained official accreditation from the Government-General of Korea, enabling graduates to qualify as certified private-school teachers.
• Establishment of the Sinchon campus: She raised building funds in the United States and acquired a new site in Sinchon. In March 1935 the college and the kindergarten training school moved into the new buildings in Sinchon. This campus is the site of present-day Ewha Womans University.
• She served on the board of trustees of the Ewha Haktang educational foundation from 1921 until her death in 1950.

Influence on the Korean Church

Appenzeller is regarded as a leading example of the so-called "second-generation missionaries"—children of missionaries who themselves became missionaries. She developed Ewha, the center of Methodist women's mission work, into a formal institution of higher education. As a result, the school trained Korean women leaders who went on to work as teachers and educators during the Japanese colonial period. Among the Korean teachers whose education she sponsored, Helen Kim succeeded her as head of the school. This transfer of the school's administration to Korean leadership is treated in the histories of both Korean Methodism and Christian schools.

Assessment

Scholars credit her with a clear understanding of both the circumstances Korean women faced and their potential. On that basis, they note, she set the concrete goal of training teachers and built up the school's institutional framework. Assessments of her generally focus on her contribution to establishing the institutional foundations of higher education for women. No significant criticism of her has been identified.