The 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

BIOGRAPHY of Lee Tai-Young

TAI-YOUNG LEE was born on September 18, 1914, in Woon San, Pyung An Pukto, in what is today North Korea, to a second generation Christian (Methodist) family. She was brought up in Young Byun in the same province, graduating from Chung Ei Girls' High School in 1931. Her mother and brother, her father being deceased, encouraged her in her studies and sent her to Ewha Womans College in Seoul, Korea's premier educational institution for women. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Home Economics in 1936, she was married the same year to Dr. Yil-hyung Chyung, a Methodist minister in Pyongyang 10 years her senior. In 1938 the couple moved to Seoul where Dr. Chyung taught at The Methodist Theological Seminary.

Her husband had studied in the United States and during World War II was arrested and imprisoned as "anti-Japanese" and a possible American spy. Although he was jailed much of that time—first in Seoul, then in Japan and finally in Pyongyang—the couple had three children; a fourth was born after the war. TAI-YOUNG LEE, who kept her maiden name as is the custom for Korean women, had to support herself, her children and her mother-in-law—as well as provide her husband with needed medication while he was in jail. She lived under the typical Korean joint family system where the woman on marriage makes her home with her husband's parents. At first she taught home economics in a secondary school, but her earnings as a teacher were insufficient to meet the family's needs. She then took up sewing, washing and "peddling quilts from door to door." At night she sang on the radio and also worked part-time for a missionary institution.

In Korea in those days one was judged by the job one did and peddling was "very degrading." TAI-YOUNG LEE said she "cried" over the fact that she, one of the few women college graduates in the country (Ewha graduated only about 10 women a year) had to stoop to such work, but "all the time God helped me," she wrote, and she was strong, "just like a cow." Cow was to become her family nickname.

When her husband was released after the Allied liberation of Korea in 1945, he wanted to give her a "gift" for supporting the family during those difficult times. He knew that ever since she was a child she had wanted to become a lawyer. As a home economics major at Ewha she had spent so many hours reading law books in the library that her classmates called her "the woman judge." He urged her to take advantage of the professional educational opportunities made newly available to women.

She began classes at Seoul National University in 1946 as the first and only "coed." The first year she failed one course. Though all of the other students also failed this course, she felt the shame of failure strongly, believing she had disgraced her mother-in-law and her children. Nevertheless she returned to the university determined to succeed. After another year and a half of hard study she received her Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), the first ever granted a woman.

Between the time she obtained her law degree in 1949, and passed the Judicial Examination (requisite to being licensed to practice) in 1952, South Korea was invaded by North Korea and TAI-YOUNG LEE and her family had to flee from Seoul to Pusan in the far south. There she continued to prepare for her examination. Discovering that the male law students devoted themselves to study day and night, she locked herself in her room to attempt to do the same thing, but found that, even though the family tried to leave her alone, she faced too many interruptions. Finally she had to leave home and live with friends in the country for six months of uninterrupted study. After she passed the Judicial Examination in 1952 a two-year period of apprentice training followed as a judge, a prosecutor and a lawyer; the new Dr. LEE entered the legal field as a probationary Judiciary Officer in the Seoul District Court and the Seoul District Public Prosecutor's Office. In 1954, upon completion of this training, she wanted to become a judge but the appointment was not forthcoming, her husband being then a leading member of the opposition party in the National Assembly. TAI-YOUNG LEE, therefore, opened her own practice and has had the distinction from then until now of being the only practicing woman lawyer in the country.

The paucity of numbers is not entirely a reflection on women law graduates. Of the approximately 7,000 who take the exam each year—men and women—20 to 40 usually pass. Dr. LEE credits much of her success to her fear of disappointing her family and to her husband's support. He constantly reminded her to work hard, pray hard and trust God. When she passed the exam she was a celebrity and women's groups held a celebration in her honor.

The year she opened her law practice, in 1954, she was elected to the boards of the Institute for Research on Problems of Korean Women, the National Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), the Ai-Kwang Won (Bright Love Children's Home) and the Tong-Gu Girls' Vocational High School, organizations she has served faithfully to the present. In 1955 she received a Special Citation from the Minister of Justice for her work on human rights.

Her concern with human rights during these years was focused on the rights of women. She became aware of women's needs in her work with women's groups, but even more so in her law practice where she was keenly cognizant of the lack of legal equality between men and women.

Korea had traditionally been a patriarchy, based upon Confucian principles which were adopted from China and held to more tenaciously in their land of adoption than in their country of origin. Japanese annexation of the country (1910-1945) did little to change these attitudes particularly in respect to women. Under Confucianism, a woman was subject to her father until her marriage, to her husband during his lifetime and to her son if she outlived her husband. A Korean woman had to "adhere unconditionally to her husband's family" even after widowhood, living in his parent's home, serving her mother-in-law. She had no property rights nor rights to her children who were considered the "property" of their father. There was a corresponding obligation, however, by husband and son to care for her.

In the immediate post World War II years women's conditions improved. Women acquired the right of suffrage and access to the university; elementary education through the sixth grade became mandatory for girls as well as boys. Under the Labor Standards Law Revision of 1954 women became entitled to paid vacations during menstrual periods and child delivery and under changes in the criminal law that same year the penalty for adultery became the same for men and women; the penalty previously had existed for women only.

During this same period a new civil code was under discussion and in the mid-1950s TAI-YOUNG LEE worked hard to see that women's rights were included. For this cause she later said, "I sang solo." She badly wanted "a chorus" to join her, but as she has noted, laws come into play only when people are unhappy, and happy people, since they have no need for recourse to the law, have little interest in change. Although she had few to help her, Dr. LEE had a significant influence on the new code.

The Civil Code was passed by the National Assembly in December 1957 and became operative in 1960. To be a "legal person" every Korean must be "registered" on a permanent record of his or her family (family register), which includes all vital information, such as birth, marriage, and death, and is used in all legal proceedings or official actions. Under provisions of the new code women above the age of 20 were allowed to establish their own households and register them: heretofore an unmarried woman whose parents had died could be registered only under the name of a male relative. (Helen Kim, famed woman educator, president of Ewha Womans College—later University—1922-1961 and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1963 for her "indomitable role in the emancipation and education of Korean women and sustained participation in civic affairs," had had to be registered under her nephew's name.) Women could take legal measures concerning property without the permission of husband or parents and could inherit property, although a widow was restricted to half of what her first son inherited, and an unmarried daughter half of that of her brother. A woman could initiate divorce proceedings, but she could take out of a marriage only what money or property she had earned or brought into it. Her contribution as a partner in the marriage and as a housewife entitled her to nothing. However, if the divorce was by court decree instead of mutual consent, she was allowed to ask the court for alimony. Alimony, if granted, usually amounted to little more than "a consolation fee." In the case of divorce the children usually stayed with the father. They were still considered his property because, as TAI-YOUNG LEE noted, in accordance with Confucian tradition the "succession of a family line is the most important thing," not the welfare of the child. In all but a few cases then, divorce left a woman with no family or financial support.

In her early experience in private practice Dr. LEE had realized that women had no effective access to the law because they had no money for legal fees, and seldom understood what rights they had. As the only woman lawyer in Korea, therefore, she began to offer her services free to women who sought her out. "All day long," she wrote, "I had to cry with them, all day long I had to agonize with them, all day long we had to discuss the problems." As a result Dr. LEE gave up her private practice—in the face of innuendos from her male colleagues that she was not able to attract a paying clientele—and opened a "legal aid office," although she had never heard the term and did not know that legal aid was offered in other parts of the world. In one little room lent by a friend she had "one small table, one telephone, one cabinet." Only two people understood fully her motivation and goals: Helen Kim, president of her alma mater, and Mrs. Shin-duk Whang who gave her the office space. However, her husband, who was now a professor of sociology and political science at Chosen Christian University and a third-time member of the National Assembly, always gave her unqualified support.

Her tiny office soon had more clients than she could readily handle and the problem of financing became acute. Nevertheless on October 5, 1956 Dr. LEE incorporated herself as the Legal Aid Center for Family Relations. She hung a sign above the door which read: "Legal Aid Center—the poor and ignorant receive aid without fee." The policy has never changed.

It was not until 10 years had passed that her friends rallied to her assistance. Finally sensing the heavy load she was carrying in counseling and fund raising, they volunteered to help in both fields, yet TAI-YOUNG LEE continued to bear the major burden and financed much of the program from her lectures and from her teaching at Ewha.

Because Dr. LEE has never given herself a salary, but rather poured her own hard-earned funds into the center, the cost per case has remained at a low 1,000 won (US$2.50). All the furnishings, she says, have been donated: "Lawyers, my women friends, even the Minister of Justice and the President of the Bar Association have donated furniture and equipment," including, she added, "the tissues for our sorrowful clients." In 1971 the government gave a small stipend but discontinued it in 1975. A problem Dr. LEE has in obtaining government aid is that her husband has remained a leader of the opposition New Democratic Party in the National Assembly. He was Foreign Minister in 1960-1961 during the brief period his party was in power before it was overthrown by the military coup which installed General Park Chung Hee, the incumbent in the presidency.

The Legal Aid Center of Korea has filled an obvious need. From handling 336 cases the first year it grew in workload so that one decade later it handled cases for 4,044 women and 1,247 men; by mid-1975 it had counseled a total of 75,000 persons. The percentage of men seeking legal assistance grew steadily he first 10 years and now remains at about one-third. The largest number of cases are divorce cases, with the next category "promise to marry" (breach of promise). Not unexpectedly men and women with the lowest educational level and from the lowest economic rank—housewives, unskilled labor and the unemployed—have been the largest group seeking help. Sixty-three percent of the women with divorce problems in the first decade were housewives with no outside job and no respite from joint family life; most claimed adultery on the part of their husbands.



The Civil Code of 1960 made divorce easier. It could be obtained for adultery, desertion or being missing for three years, cruelty to parents-in-law or by parents-in-law, and any other reason which makes impossible the continuation of married life, the latter requiring a judicial decision. The Code also established two ways of acquiring a divorce —by mutual consent or by court decree. Although 94 percent of the divorces are by mutual consent, Dr. LEE has reason to believe that in a large proportion of these cases the husband has exerted force on the wife to agree. Only in a court-granted divorce does a wife have a chance to get legal determination of property rights. The Legal Aid Center tries to counsel wives and husbands in order to save marriages, but if the couple insists on a divorce it will help the woman go to court to obtain her rights.

In spite of her heavy load of counseling, fund raising and teaching, Dr. LEE managed in 1957 to publish a book on the Divorce System in Korea, pointing out the many legal inequalities still in existence. The same year she visited the United States as a guest of the U.S. Department of State to learn more about legal aid and to visit family relations courts. Dr. LEE was hopeful of establishing such a court in Korea. Traveling from Los Angeles to New York City to observe courts and the American legal system, she settled down to spend a semester in graduate school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

In 1963 Helen Kim persuaded Dr. TAI-YOUNG LEE to become Dean of the College of Law and Political Science at Ewha which was now a university. Dr. LEE had long resisted such a suggestion because she wanted to give her full time to the center, but the two positions proved to be complementary. Dr. LEE instituted a clinical legal education course at Ewha and changed and strengthened the curriculum. Graduates from Ewha found ready work at the Legal Aid Center and seniors have served there as trainees; at one point they were all the help she had.

Today the legal profession recognizes the value of TAI-YOUNG LEE's work to a larger extent than when she first began it. She continues to assert her conviction that women's rights are a vital and integral part of the rights of all human beings. The center staff is composed entirely of women, from the initial interviewer to the law college graduates who serve as counselors. At first the basic information about a client is recorded and then given to the counselor who interviews and advises the client. If the case is complex, several appointments may be required, and often the other party to the problem will be called to come. The center is open six days a week and handles 30 to 40 clients a day. Some cases take several hours because many women want to pour out their life stories and need someone who will listen sympathetically as well as give them advice.

The Legal Aid Center offers counseling not only in Seoul but, as of 1971, in five provincial cities: Chonju, Taegu, Masan, Pusan and Kwangju. Since 1962 Dr. LEE has given legal advice over the radio and on television, at lectures and by mail. She has plans to add a mobile center which can take counseling to women who may not know it is available: e.g. housewives, factory workers (women constitute 54 percent of the Korean workforce) and villagers. Other plans include adding departments for children, marriage counseling and human rights protection. To house this greatly expanded work she hopes to build a seven-story building. The first three floors would be rented out as office space to cover the organization's operating expenses; the center would occupy the fourth and fifth floors; the sixth would include an auditorium for women's groups and law students, and the seventh for a women's rights library. On top of the building, Dr. LEE hopes to place a bell which will ring every night at five, "I'd like that to be a signal for all married men to go home," she says, adding that in Korea men "never go home after work. They fool around until the curfew at bars and coffee houses. This is the basic reason for most of the family trouble in Korea."

Dr. LEE has been attempting to raise money for this building for the last several years. She was in Hawaii in 1974 seeking to get donations from Korean women working or living abroad. Her request is for US$25-30 per year for two years; one woman has given US$10,000. To help her in this major undertaking she has organized two 100-women's clubs into a fund raising committee under the mottoes: "A happy woman should help an unhappy poor woman," and "For the woman, of the woman, by the woman." Although the center plans to continue helping indigent males Dr. LEE wants to keep the accent on women, assuring them that they have a place to turn for help in Korea's rapidly changing society.

Dr. LEE has decided that the US$10,000 accompanying the Magsaysay Award will be used to start construction of this building. One reason she so strongly desires a permanent home for the center is that when the center moves they lose clients—the clients do not understand why or where they have moved, only that they have left. Their previous three moves were necessitated by a combination of need for more space and an escalation of their rent. In 1970 the center became a member of the International Legal Aid Association.

Dr. LEE long advocated a family court to resolve family problems. The center can only offer advice, and to a small number of indigents; a court was needed to hear cases from the broader society and to bring them to a mutually agreed upon, and legally enforceable solution. On the basis of her interest Dr. LEE was appointed a member of the drafting committee which drew up the Domestic Relations Adjudication Law which, on October 1, 1963, established the Seoul Family Court. The law also provided that in case of separation or divorce designation of the person to bring up the children would be settled by the Family Court. This was the first time that a mother was recognized as being potentially able to raise her children. However, even to the present, the legal rights over children belong automatically to the father. Dr. LEE was appointed a conciliator on the court and served as such from its inception until 1971.

The court provides closed hearings and complete privacy for separated husbands and wives. A panel of judges, professors, social workers and prominent members of the community "ensure that problems of estranged couples are well studied . . . to prevent couples heading for divorce courts." In 1972 the Legal Aid Center was moved to the same compound as the Family Court so the center staff could keep an eye on the cases they referred to it.

During the years that Dr. LEE was giving her time and energies to the Legal Aid Center and the court, she was also completing her doctoral dissertation, A Study of Divorce in Korea. It was accepted and published in 1969. Dr. LEE came up with some surprising facts. She found that, contrary to common assumption, the divorce rate was not rising. The highest rate was in 1912-13, the first period of modernization, when it was more than twice as high as in 1969 or since. She also discovered that the urban divorce rate was not higher, but in some cases considerably lower, than the rate in rural areas, and that Korea had, and still has, one of the lowest divorce rates in the world—.03 percent. It took Dr. LEE five years to assemble her data, and her study when completed ran to 988 printed pages. She received her Doctor of Juristic Science from Seoul National University in 1969, achieving another first: the first woman in Korea to receive a doctorate of laws. That same year she was recognized as Korea's "Mother of the Year" for her work in behalf of women's rights. In 1970 she received an honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Ewha University.

During her years of involvement in women's rights TAI-YOUNG LEE has been active in a number of women's organizations at home and abroad. She has been on the board of the National Council for Women's Associations, as well as since 1954 of the Institute for Research on Problems of Korean Women, the National YWCA (probably the largest and strongest women's group in Korea, boasting some 50,000 members), the Ai-Kwang Won and the Tong-Gu Girls' Vocational High School. She was selected in 1964 as Vice Chairman of the Commission for Studying Family Laws and, as the only woman lawyer in Korea, Vice President for Korea of the International Federation of Women Lawyers, serving on both bodies until 1971. In 1973 she was elected Vice President of the Federation of Women Lawyers. She helped found the Korean League of Women Voters in 1970.

In connection with these activities Dr. LEE traveled to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1971 to attend the Conference on World Peace Through Law and was given that organization's first Medallion Award, July 22, 1971. On the same trip—which took her through 14 countries—she attended the International Conference of the World YWCA in Accra, Ghana; the Moral Re-Armament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, and the meeting of the International Federation of Women Lawyers in Tel Aviv where the 250 women lawyers affirmed their belief that "world peace is based on peace in the home of which women are the backbone."

Dr. LEE’s cause today, besides raising money and seeing to the construction of the Legal Aid Building, is to get the government to reform the Civil Code where it still discriminates against women. In order to do so she helped create in 1973 the Pan Women's Committee made up of some 60 women's organizations. The purpose of the organization is to support the movement to revise the family law.

There are 10 basic changes they seek. The first three have to do with regulations they feel are no longer pertinent but are remnants of tradition, laws defining blood relationships to the 8th degree, rights of eldest sons to succession and the ban on couples of the same surname and clan from marrying even though they are not closely related. The next two have to do with property. Dr. LEE and the others actively involved in changing the code seek common ownership by husband and wife of property acquired by common effort and a fair division of such in the case of divorce.

Divorce, they believe should be accompanied by a "clear statement of intention of both parties, certified by the Family Court" to prevent the husband from forcing the wife to agree to a divorce she doesn't want and to ensure that both she and their children are adequately cared for.

By the same token parental authority should be exercised in common, a mother having authority over the children equal to that of the father, and children by a mistress or concubine should not be forced upon a wife to raise as her own—with the same legal rights of inheritance—without her consent. (This is a major cause of family and property disputes.)

Finally, daughters and wives should inherit equally with brothers and sons, and a man should not be allowed in his will to dispose of property which has been accumulated with the help of his family, without properly providing for his family first.

Between 1973 and 1975 the Committee campaigned to get women to write their assemblymen and women law school graduates gave lectures and broadcasts, made television appearances and wrote newspaper and magazine articles to explain the need for change. The slogan of the campaign was: "We are the same human beings." In spring 1975 the Committee got the 10 women members of the National Assembly to introduce a draft of the bill in the assembly; it will be debated during the current session.

During these 20 years of women's work TAI-YOUNG LEE has, if anything, become more tolerant of the needs of men. After the first few years men have supported her and recognized the wisdom of her position that "no society can or will prosper without the cooperation of women." All of us need companions, LEE feels, and welcome competent sharing partners. She urges women to grow into those roles. Women have a responsibility for making a husband want to come home, she says.

Dr. LEE combines all of her activities with her writing. In 1963 she translated into Korean Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's book, On My Own. In 1970 she got out the third edition of Legal Counciling for Family Relations, first compiled in 1958, and in 1972 she published Commonsense in Law for Women. She has also been both a lay reader and a lay speaker in her church, Namsan Methodist.

Her children, far from feeling neglected, seem to have chosen to follow in her footsteps. Her second daughter, Soun Sook, is a Seoul National University Law School graduate as is her son, Dai Chul, who is at present in a doctoral program in the United States. Both Soun Sook and her elder sister Chin Sook are married to lawyers and their husbands often work together with Dr. LEE. Mi Sook, the youngest daughter, is married and is currently doing advanced study in Fine Arts at her mother's alma mater, Ewha.

When TAI-YOUNG LEE is asked why she doesn't retire, or at least slow down and enjoy her children and grandchildren, she responds: "I had a late start. I have to keep running, there's so much to do and I must hurry to do it while I have the time."

September 1975
Manila

REFERENCES:

Adam, Pat. "Women’s Role Changing in Korea," Herald. Chicago. January 10, 1974.

"Call to set up Family Courts," Straits Echo. Penang, Malaysia July 10, 1973.

"Dr. Lee Tae-Yung: Korea’s First Lady Judge," Together. Nashville, Tennessee:United Methodist Publishing House. July 1972.

"Dr. Tai-Young Lee," The Woman. Seoul National Council of Women of the Republic of Korea. Vol. 5, no. 1-2, June 1969.

Erskine, Andrew. ``Korea’s Women’s Lib Lags Behind, Says Judge During Court Tour Here," Daily Journal. Los Angeles. January 14,1974.

Fehst, Gerri. "Korean Rights Fight Told," Chicago Tribune. January 18, 1974.

"1st PhD. in Law," The Woman. Seoul: National Council of Women of the Republic of Korea Vol. 5 , no. 1-2, June 1969.

Guthrie, Martha. "Women’s Lib Lawyer," Asia Magazine. Hong Kong. October 22, 1972.

"Improving Woman’s Legal Status Stressed," Korea Times. Seoul. November 11, 1954.

Kim, Kee Sook and Kyung Lim Kim. "Dean of Law College Earns Ph.D. Degree," Korean Republic. Seoul. March 31, 1969.

Lee, Kyung-Hee. "Women’s Rights Leader Offers Family service," Korea Times. Seoul. December 2, 1973.

Lee, Tai-young. "Elevation of Korean Women’s Rights," Korea Journal. Seoul. Vol. 4, 1964, p.49, 43.

______. "Korea Legal Aid Center for Women," The Woman. Seoul: National Council of Women of the Republic of Korea. Vol. 8, No. 4, December 1973.

______. "Legal Aid Center for Family Relations." November 11, 1973. 4p. (Mimeographed).

______. "Presentation to Group Discussion. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, Manila. September 2, 1975. (Mimeographed transcript.)

______. "Welcome Luncheon Remarks, Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Manila. September 2, 1975. (Mimeographed transcript )

Lee, Won-Chu. "Lady Lawyer Gives Views on Korean Family System," Indian Express. New Delhi. July 16, 1965.

Pond, Elizabeth. "The Very Unequal Status of Women in Korea," Honolulu Advertiser. November 7, 1974.

"Report from the Legal Aid Center," The Woman. Seoul: National Council of Women of the Republic of Korea. Vol. 2, no. 4, December 1966.

"She Gives Legal Advice," Manila Times. February 22, 1961.

Taylor, Lois. "The Remarkable Lady from Seoul," Star-Bulletin. Honolulu. September 25, 1974.

Ten Proposed Revisions in the Civil Code Relating to The Family Law. Sponsored by Pan-Women's Committee for the Revision of Korean Family Law. Presented April 1975 to Korean National Assembly. (Mimeographed.)

"Wife Succeeds in Making 1st ROK Lady Judge of Herself," Korea Times. Seoul. December 18, 1953.

Yim, Kap-Son. "Lady Lawyer Gives Legal Aid to Poor," ibid. September 26, 1971.

Letters from and interviews with colleagues of Tai-young Lee.