Elisabeth Johanna Shepping

Life

Shepping was born in 1880 to a Catholic family in Wiesbaden, Germany. She emigrated to the United States as a child and in 1901 graduated from the nursing school of St. Mark's Hospital in New York. While working as a nurse in the United States, she converted from Catholicism to Protestantism.

In 1912 she went to Korea as a nurse missionary under the foreign mission board of the Southern Presbyterian Church. She worked at Jejungwon in Gwangju (now Kwangju Christian Hospital), the Jesus Hospital in Guam, Gunsan, and Severance Hospital in Seoul. She settled in Gwangju around 1919; her departure from Seoul is reported to have been prompted by her aid to people injured and imprisoned during the March First Movement. She spoke Korean, adopted a Korean way of life, and used the Korean name Seo Seo-pyeong. After suffering for many years from an endemic disease, she died in Gwangju on June 26, 1934. Malnutrition is reported to have been the principal cause of death. In accordance with her wishes, her body was donated for medical research.

Ministry and Achievements

• Nursing: She trained and supervised nurses and wrote or translated nursing textbooks. In 1923 she founded the Joseon Nurses' Association (Joseon Ganhobuhoe) and served as its first president; this organization was the forerunner of the present-day Korean Nurses Association. She also visited the leprosarium (a facility for patients with Hansen's disease) founded by the Rev. Choi Heung-jong and cared for its patients.
• Women's education: In 1922 she used her own funds to open a school for training Bible women (female evangelists). In 1926 a school building was constructed with funds sent by the benefactor Lois Neel, and the school was named the Neel Bible School (Iil Bible School). It offered a general course that taught Hangul literacy and a Bible course that taught Scripture. The school is the forerunner of today's Hanil University and Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
• Church women's organizations: She took the lead in forming the Women's Auxiliary (Buin Joryeokhoe), an association of church women. Even after the Presbyterian General Assembly renamed the Women's Auxiliary the Women's Missionary Society in 1928, the old name remained in use for some time in the Honam region and on Jeju Island. She also organized Women's Auxiliaries in Moseulpo on Jeju and elsewhere and expanded Sunday school work.
• Relief: She is said to have adopted and raised fourteen orphans and to have lived with thirty-eight widows who had no one else to rely on. She taught sericulture (silkworm raising) to women in Yangnim-dong, Gwangju, so that they could support themselves.

Influence on the Korean Church

She is regarded as having laid the foundations of women's education and medical missions within Presbyterianism in the Honam region. The school and organizations she founded have developed into a present-day theological university, a nursing association, and church women's organizations. Her motto, "Not success, but service," which she is said to have hung by her bed, is frequently quoted in the Korean church. In 2012 a service commemorating the centennial of her arrival in Korea was held at Owen Memorial Hall in Yangnim-dong, Gwangju. Her life has also been the subject of the documentary film Seo Seo-pyeong: Slowly and Peacefully.

Assessment

Her funeral was held at Owen Memorial Hall on July 7, 1934. According to accounts, it was originally planned as a church funeral, but at the request of townspeople, including many who were not church members, it grew into Gwangju's first civic funeral (a funeral held jointly by civic organizations and citizens). She is also sometimes described as one of the "seven great missionaries" named by the foreign mission board of the Southern Presbyterian Church. However, most assessments to date have come from the church, the nursing profession, and the school she founded. Details such as the number of children she adopted and the circumstances of her move from Seoul to Gwangju vary somewhat among sources. Her Korean name is also written in Chinese characters both as 徐舒平 and as 徐徐平.