{"id":12812,"date":"2026-10-31T16:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T16:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=12812"},"modified":"2026-10-31T16:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T16:05:15","slug":"women-denied-access-to-education-mourn-principal-who-gave-it-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=12812","title":{"rendered":"Women denied access to education mourn principal who gave it back"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>9 Minute, 8 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\"Lee<\/picture>
\n

Lee Seon-jae, late principal of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School \/ Korea Times illustration by Shin Dong-jun<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“You have to go to your families and say, ‘I am a student now, I have to study, so let’s share the housework.'”<\/p>\n

Kim Sang-hyun, vice principal of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School, offered advice and encouragement to the students gathered in front of the platform on March 3 at Sinchon Methodist Church in western Seoul, at the school’s entrance ceremony for the 2026 academic year. The women about to become middle and high school students did not dress or look like other students. They wore hanbok, traditional Korean clothing, instead of uniforms, and not one of them looked like typical teenagers worn down by a nagging parent.<\/p>\n

Among them was 77-year-old Lee Bok-gae, who was entering middle school that morning \u2014 an adult learner, one of the women who lost their chance at school due to financial difficulties and gender inequality in education. Born the eldest of seven children, studying became an elusive dream, as she had to work while caring for her younger siblings. <\/p>\n

That same day, her granddaughter became a middle school student, too. On her way to a different school, the girl waved and called out to her, saying, “Grandmother, you’re really cool. We’re both middle school students now, so let’s study hard together.”<\/p>\n

“If this school didn’t exist, I would have gone my whole life without ever easing the pain of being denied an education,” Lee said. “I’m so grateful that even now I can run toward my dream. Teacher Lee Seon-jae, thank you so much.”<\/p>\n

The vice principal ran most of the ceremony. The rest of the responsibilities rested on Lee Seon-jae, the principal to whom Lee Bok-gae had bowed her head. He had given his whole life to women living on the margins of the education system, and people called him the “Korean Pestalozzi,” after Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, the Swiss reformer who built schools for destitute children. On May 10, two months after that ceremony, he died. He was 90.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/picture>
\n

A message reading “Age is just a number” marks the stairs at Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School in Seoul’s Mapo District, June 25. Korea Times photo by Nam Byeong-jin<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lee Seon-jae was born in Kaesong in 1936 and fled to Seoul during the 1951 evacuation of Seoul during the 1950-53 Korean War. Neighbors helped him through university, and in 1960, he opened a night school. Around that time, he heard that Ilsung Higher Civic School, which the children of war refugees attended, had gone a year without paying its rent and was holding classes outdoors. He went to a Korean medicine doctor he knew, someone who had already helped his night school, and asked for help. The school was not shut down. That was where his life with Ilsung began.<\/p>\n

Ten years passed. Older housewives and women factory workers began coming and going at Ilsung, a school until then attended mainly by refugees. The factory workers said they had come because reading the labels attached to clothing had made them curious about English. Their factory owners would not allow it. Pressed to choose \u2014 school or factory, one or the other \u2014 some of them stopped coming. What Lee Seon-jae built in answer was Ilsung’s Sunday school, which threw its doors open on the one day the women did not report to the factory.<\/p>\n

The lives of the women he took in followed a similar path. Money was short. In the order of who got to study, they lost out to older and younger brothers, and were sent to work in the fields and the factories instead. As adults, they married into their husbands’ families, and once they gave birth, child-rearing left them no time for themselves. When they had finally sent their children to university, they took up the care of aging parents and parents-in-law. That was what duty meant then.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/picture>
\n

Students hold their breath as they watch a live broadcast of Korea’s World Cup match against South Africa at Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School in Seoul’s Mapo District, June 25. Korea Times photo by Nam Byeong-jin<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The school where the older women were welcomed was Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School. It still enrolls 950 adult learners. They keep studying alongside the work that pays them \u2014 selling insurance, servicing water purifiers, cleaning buildings, working as certified care workers, keeping other people’s houses.<\/p>\n

Kim Bong-ja, 67, was one of them. She graduated from the high school division of Ilsung and is now a student at Sookmyung Women’s University. The day she received her diploma, she went to her parents’ graves and wept.<\/p>\n

“Studying was my lifelong goal, and now every day feels like a dream,” she said<\/p>\n

\"A<\/picture>
\n

A graduate wipes away tears during the 24th graduation ceremony of Ilsung Women’s Middle School at Sinchon Church in Seoul’s Mapo District, Feb. 23. Korea Times photo by Park Si-mon<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She thinks often about Lee Seon-jae’s soybean-sprout lesson.<\/p>\n

“Teacher Lee used to encourage us by saying, ‘When you study, there are plenty of times you forget things, but if you keep learning and learning, a moment comes when you shoot up all at once, like soybean sprouts in a sprouting pot,'” she said. “The teacher has gone on ahead of us, but his teaching will stay with me for the rest of my life.”<\/p>\n

\"Principal<\/picture>
\n

Principal Lee Seon-jae’s New Year’s message fills the front page of the first edition of the school newspaper published by Ilsung Higher Civic School and Ilsung Girls’ Commercial School, predecessors of today’s Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School, Jan. 31, 1986. Courtesy of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The students he opened the doors to were fiercely dedicated. Factory workers and housewives arrived so long before dawn that the school had to post a notice reading, “We open the doors at 7:30 a.m.” Their zeal was a large part of why the school won recognition as an educational facility from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education in 2000 and grew into the Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School of today. Some 63,000 students have reached the dream of learning in his care.<\/p>\n

\"Writings<\/picture>
\n

Writings by students at Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School and Yangwon Elementary School around 2007 capture the thirst for learning the women had carried for years. Courtesy of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of them came out of it with different lives altogether. Kang Hee-cheon, 68, is the clearest case. Kang spent middle school years in 1973 at Ilsung Higher Civic School, the predecessor of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School, where Lee taught abacus arithmetic.<\/p>\n

As Kang remembers him, Lee was always strict. Lee had recruited every child in Kang’s class personally. He sought out children who were poor or abandoned by their parents \u2014 children of the street \u2014 talked them into it and brought them to the school himself.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/picture>
\n

Lee Seon-jae, then a teacher at Ilsung Higher Civic School, the predecessor of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School, hands out prizes to students at a sports day the school hosted around 1970. Courtesy of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lee drilled three things into his students: truthfulness, diligence and frugality. Only someone who does not deceive themselves can avoid deceiving others, he always added. Only someone who works sincerely can fulfill their use. Only someone who lives frugally can know what is precious. “Living right matters more than being smart” was his standing line, and whenever he spotted a student harboring resentment toward society and heading in a bad direction, Kang said, he went straight to the student’s home and set it right.<\/p>\n

Kang remembers him as a teacher in the old sense of the word.<\/p>\n

“Teacher Lee Seon-jae was a mentor who lived out ahead of me, so I could learn how to live and follow even a little way behind him,” Kang said. “He taught strictly, but he was the kind of person who would invent prizes that didn’t exist just to spur his students on.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe he is the person who decided the course of my life,” Kang said.<\/p>\n

Kang finished Ilsung Higher Civic School under Lee, then entered university through a school-equivalency examination. Kang went on to pass the Grade 9 civil service examination, the entry-level rank, worked at the Mapo District Office and retired in 2017 as director of its safety and public administration bureau, a senior grade 4 post. Since retiring, Kang has volunteered with free meal programs for elderly people.<\/p>\n

“I chose the civil service because I wanted to be of benefit to society, the way Teacher Lee was,” Kang said. “I wanted to give back what he gave me.”<\/p>\n

\"Cardinal<\/picture>
\n

Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan talks with Principal Lee Seon-jae during a visit to Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School in Seoul’s Mapo District in 2002. Courtesy of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The place Lee held open for adult learners may now disappear. In his will, he directed that the school operate only until February 2028. The Lifelong Education Act recognizes only school corporations and incorporated foundations as bodies entitled to establish a lifelong education facility, which means that once the founder steps away, the governing body has to convert into a converted entity. Conversion requires meeting a list of conditions, among them facilities and financing.<\/p>\n

\"Principal<\/picture>
\n

Principal Lee Seon-jae hands diplomas to students during the Ilsung Women’s Middle School graduation ceremony at Sinchon Methodist Church in Seoul’s Mapo District, Feb. 25. Courtesy of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In June, the school posted a petition on the National Assembly’s website, asking lawmakers to amend the Lifelong Education Act to preserve the school’s public service role, protect its students’ right to learn and its teaching staff. The petition needed 50,000 signatures within a 30-day window. It did not get them, and it lapsed.<\/p>\n

Teachers and others at the school have asked education authorities for a public model instead \u2014 entrusting operations to a public foundation, for one \u2014 but the practical obstacles are considerable. Keeping open the school Lee had protected since 1960, a place that opened learning to women who had weathered life’s hardships until they put their studies aside, now falls to the people he left behind.<\/p>\n

The school’s website still carries this greeting: “We provide a true education to women who missed their chance to learn because their households were poor, or for the single reason that they were women. Please board the train of learning, shake off the frustration and the sorrow you could never tell anyone, and enjoy a bright and lively happiness.”<\/p>\n

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n\n

\n
\n \n
\n \n \"Happy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Happy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sad\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sad <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Excited\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Excited <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sleepy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sleepy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Angry\"\n <\/a>\n
Angry<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Surprise\"\n <\/a>\n
Surprise<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lee Seon-jae, late principal of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School \/ Korea Times illustration by Shin Dong-jun “You have to go to your families and say, ‘I am a student now, I have to study, so let’s share the housework.’” Kim Sang-hyun, vice principal of Ilsung Women’s Middle and High School, offered advice and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-korea","category-trending-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t