Cream background with handwritten cursive at top; on bottom, a photo of female educators and students. Title and author on light brown text box.

Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 358
Illustrations: 5 b&w photos

World History
 Religious Studies
 Memoir & Biography
 East-West Encounters in Literature and Cultural Studies
 ebook
 Books
 Women's & Gender Studies
 Open Access Ebook

Pioneer of Korean Female Education

Missionary Lulu E. Frey's Letters from Ewha Haktang, 1893–1918

edited by Julie Choi and Duk-Ae Chung

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Ebook
978-1-64336-661-6
 Published: Apr 15 2026

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978-1-64336-661-6
 Published: Apr 15 2026

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The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of Ewha Womans University and University of South Carolina Libraries

The American who opened women's higher education in Korea

Lulu E. Frey served in Korea for the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church beginning in 1893. She became a teacher and later principal at Ewha, Korea's first girls' school. There, Christian principles were taught along with academic subjects, hygiene, and the sanctity of the woman-centered domestic sphere. The precepts of evangelical Christianity merged with seemingly liberating ideals of modernity. In 1910, the year Japan officially annexed Korea, Frey established Ewha's college program. Many of the young women who studied at Ewha became the first female teachers, nurses, and doctors in Korea and joined a rising cohort of "New Women" across East Asia.

In Pioneer of Korean Female Education, Julie Choi and Duk-Ae Chung present Frey's previously unpublished letters. These documents offer intimate insight into the work of running, expanding, and raising funds for a school during the political turmoil and wars that marked the end of the Joseon Dynasty, the short-lived Korean Empire, and the first decade of Japanese occupation.

A joint publication from the University of South Carolina Press and the National Taiwan University Press.



Julie Choi is professor of English at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.

Duk-Ae Chung is professor emerita of English, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea.

"In Julie Choi and Duk-Ae Chung's elegant rendering, the quiet force of Christian missions emerges not simply as an institution but also as a catalyst for modern Korean womanhood—a flame that still burns within Ewha Womans University, the world's largest institution of women's education."—Yoo Theodore Jun, Yonsei University, author of The Politics of Gender in Colonial Korea