The present Ewha Girls' High School area retains traces of the old campus and several modern buildings. Ewha Hakdang was founded in 1886 by the American missionary Mary F. Scranton. At first it was difficult even to find pupils because families hesitated to entrust their daughters to foreigners. Beginning with a single student, the residential school slowly grew by providing lodging and basic education.
The royal court bestowed the name “Ewha”
In 1887, Gojong gave the school the name Ewha, meaning “pear blossom.” Royal naming of a school run by a foreign woman missionary shows that women's education was not entirely a private experiment. Yet missionary goals and Western rules of domestic life were also part of the curriculum. The beginning of modern women's education cannot be described only as a one-way gift.
From the classroom to hospitals and society
Students learned Hangul, English, arithmetic, the Bible, music, and practical skills. Ewha and Bogu Yeogwan, a women's hospital in Jeongdong, linked education to medical care and demonstrated the need for female practitioners to treat female patients. Graduates later worked as teachers, nurses, medical professionals, and social activists, widening the path for women to develop expertise outside the home.
Read the surviving campus at Simpson Memorial Hall
Simpson Memorial Hall, built in 1915, now houses the Ewha Museum. Rather than looking only for celebrated graduates, examine early textbooks, school rules, and dormitory life. Women's education in Jeongdong was not an abstract story of “enlightenment.” It concretely changed who could become literate and where women could work.