Ewha Haktang

Background

In late nineteenth-century Joseon, society was not receptive to the idea of women attending school and pursuing an education, and few parents were willing to entrust their daughters to foreigners. The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States sent Mary F. Scranton as the woman missionary responsible for its work in Korea. She arrived in Joseon in 1885 with her son, the medical missionary William Scranton, and his wife. The opening of Pai Chai Haktang by Henry Appenzeller in the same Jeongdong neighborhood is also said to have encouraged the founding of a school for girls.

Development

• February–November 1886: Construction of a traditional Korean-style (hanok) school building began on a hill in Jeongdong and was completed in November. Large enough to house about 35 students, it included classrooms and living quarters for the teachers.
• May 31, 1886: Scranton held the first class at her home in Jeongdong with a single student, and this date became the school's founding day. The first student was Madam Kim, the concubine of a high-ranking official, who hoped to learn English and become an interpreter for the queen. According to accounts, however, she gave up her studies after a few months because of illness. Afterward, the school admitted girls such as daughters of impoverished families who struggled to put food on the table and girls with nowhere else to go. For this reason, some accounts regard a student who enrolled in June as the school's first student in a practical sense.
• February 1887: King Gojong bestowed the name "Ewha Haktang" (梨花學堂, "Pear Blossom School") and sent a name plaque through Kim Yun-sik, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The two leading explanations for the name "Ewha" are that it came from the pear blossoms that bloomed near the school or from Ihwajeong, a pavilion that had stood on the site. Once the state officially recognized the school, women of the upper classes also began to enroll. Enrollment reportedly grew to 7 students in 1887, 18 in 1888, and 30 in 1893.
• The curriculum included Hangul, English, Classical Chinese, arithmetic, physical exercise, and the Bible, and the students lived together in a dormitory.
• 1904: A middle school course was established.
• 1910: A college course was newly opened.
• 1915: A kindergarten teacher-training course was established.
• 1918: The upper and elementary courses were separated from the school and opened as Ewha Girls' Higher Common School and Ewha Girls' Common School, respectively.
• 1925: The college and preparatory courses were reorganized as Ewha Women's College. In 1928 the name "Ewha Haktang" was formally retired.

Results and Influence

In the final years of Japanese rule, Ewha Women's College was renamed Keijō Women's College. After liberation it became a comprehensive university, Ewha Womans University, while the secondary program continued as Ewha Girls' High School. Ewha Womans University uses the singular form "Womans" in its English name, and a widely known explanation holds that this derives from the school's beginnings with a single student. The independence activist Yu Gwan-sun also studied at Ewha Haktang.

In Jeongdong, Pai Chai Haktang and Ewha Haktang stood side by side, with Chungdong First Methodist Church between them. Both schools received their names from King Gojong. The area was the center of early Korean Methodist mission work.

Assessment

Ewha Haktang educated students continuously from the 1880s onward, at a time when there was almost no public sympathy for women's education. For this reason it is regarded as the starting point of modern education for women in Korea. Regardless of denomination, it is cited as a leading example of educational mission—mission carried out through schools—in early Korean Protestant history. It is also treated as one of the roots of today's Christian school tradition.