Background
Lee Tai-Young was born on 10 August 1914 in Pukjin, Unsan County, in what is now North of Korea. Her father was a gold miner. Her mother was named Kim Heung-Won.
Lee Tai-Young was born on 10 August 1914 in Pukjin, Unsan County, in what is now North of Korea. Her father was a gold miner. Her mother was named Kim Heung-Won.
After completing school in Pukjin, she studied at Chung Eui Girls" High School in Pyongyang. She attended Ewha Womans University, graduating with a bachelor"s degree in home economics before marrying the Methodist minister, Yil Hyung Chyung (who had studied in America), in 1936.
She fought for women"s rights all through her career. Her often mentioned refrain was, "Number society can or will prosper without the cooperation of women." Her dedication to law also got her the epithet "the woman judge."
She was a third-generation Methodist. Her maternal grandfather founded the Methodist Church in Lee"s home town.
He was suspected of being a spy for the United States in the 1940s and was imprisoned as "anti-Japanese".
He later became the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of of Korea. Initially when she came to Seoul to study at Ewha Womans University, her wish was to become a lawyer
Lee then had to work as a school teacher and radio singer, and took in sewing and washing in the early 1940s to maintain her family. In 1946, she became the first woman to enter Seoul National University, earning her law degree three years later.
In 1957, after the Korean War she opened a law practice, Women"s Legal Counseling Center, which provided services to poor women.
In 1952, she was the first woman to pass the National Judicial Examination. Her law practice became the of Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations, serving more than 10,000 clients each year. There are two English-language biographies of Doctor Lee, David Finkelstein"s of Korea"s "Quiet" Revolutionary: A Profile of Lee Tai-young (1979) and Sonia Reid Strawn"s Where There is Number Path: Lee Tai-Young, Her Story (1988).
In 1975, she was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (also known as Asian Peace Prize) for Community Leadership by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation with the citation " for effective service to the cause of equal judicial rights for liberation of Korean Women." Three years later, she received the international legal aid award of the International Legal Aid Association. Some of the other awards that she received were the World Methodist Peace Award in 1984, and in 1981 the Honorary Doctorate in Law from the Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. In 1971 she won the conference award when she participated in the World Peace Though Law Conference held in Belgrade.
Considered an enemy of President Park Chung-hee because of her political views, she was arrested, receiving in 1977 a three-year suspended sentence, a loss of civil liberties, and an automatic disbarment for ten years.
Quotations: " for effective service to the cause of equal judicial rights for liberation of Korean Women.".
