A Touching Story with a Fairy Tale Ending - SNU Campus Couple Donates Two Billion KRW to Alma Mater 

LEE Soon-Ja, Sookmyung Women’s University honorary professor in the Department of Library and Information Sciences, who lost her husband KIM Jae-Ik in the 1983 Aung San terrorist bombing (also known as the Rangoon Bombing) in Burma, has donated two billion KRW to her and her husband’s alma mater SNU.

On the first day of this month, Professor Lee met SNU President Oh Yeon-Cheon and handed over her family’s life savings -- two billion KRW -- asking for it to be used to “educate young scholars who dream of becoming government officials in the field of economics” as her husband had been before becoming a senior secretary for economic affairs. She also expressed her plans to bequeath her house upon her death to the university as well.

Seoul National University decided to honor Professor Lee’s request and to establish the “SNU Kim Jae-Ik Scholarship Fund for International Students” to support public officials in developing countries. SNU announced on December 2 that the agreement signing ceremony for this scholarship will take place later this month.

On October 9, 1983, the DPRK carried out a terrorist bombing at Aung San’s tomb, the symbol of Myanmar’s independence, aimed to murder former Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan. Seventeen high ranking government officials were killed on duty including Lee Soon-Ja’s husband Kim Jae-Ik, senior secretary for economic affairs. After losing her husband to that misfortune, Lee Soon-Ja self-handedly looked after her two sons for 27 years.

In the 1950s, Lee Soon-Ja ’61 and Kim Jae-Ik ’60 met as undergraduate students at SNU and became a campus couple. Lee Soon-Ja attended the College of Humanities majoring in French Language and Literature, while her husband Kim Jae-Ik was a student in the Department of International Relations in the College of Social Sciences. The couple married soon thereafter.

After graduation, Professor Lee and her husband were able to study abroad in the United States with the support of the University of Hawaii East-West Cultural Center and Stanford University Ford Foundation Scholarship in the 1960s. That experience and opportunity lead Professor Lee to later decide to give away her life savings to help young scholars from developing countries to raise their country’s economy as her husband did back when Korea was underdeveloped. Professor Lee commented, “Just as we contributed to our country with education provided by scholarships from developed countries, it is now our turn to aid countries less developed than ours in order to strengthen our global sense of community.”

Kim Jae-Ik, the former senior secretary for economic affairs, is attributed with having constructed a blueprint for the Korean economy in the 1980s. He felt that the government-led central economy at the time had limitations and thus was an advocate of the transition to privatization of the economy.

Jan. 4, 2011
Written by LEE Bo-Young, SNU English Editor