An 89-year-old vendor has donated her 10 billion won ($8.8 million) fortune she had saved for 60 years to Yonsei University to help poor students. Kim Soon-jeon visited the university on Aug. 14 and said she hoped to set up a scholarship program in her name with her assets, including her house and buildings.“I hope the money can help students who cannot pursue their academic careers due to financial difficulties,” Kim said.  Kim herself has been maintaining a frugal life. When the Korean War had

Geum develops business from simple repair shop to builder of specialized sports modelsHalf the workers at wheelchair maker Wheel Line are disabled themselves, including chief executive Geum Dong-ok. The reason: “Those who need them the most will make wheelchairs with passion and consideration,” he says. Geum, 39, was a healthy, responsible young man before an incident 20 years ago, when he spotted a girl he knew getting harassed by pimps. When he tried to rescue her, they stabbed him in his back

More than 1,000 children had a rare chance to create special art pieces with famous media artist Lee Lee-nam last week as part of an art education program sponsored by South Korean conglomerate Hanwha and the Korean Business Council for the Arts. The children’s drawings and sculptures will be part of a single media installation piece by Lee that will be shown at the 2012 World Conservation Congress at the International Convention Center in Jeju from Sept. 6-15. Lee is serving as the goodwill amb

Koh Young-cho, a neurosurgeon at Konkuk University Medical Center, has been treating neglected people for 35 years. At the age of 59, Koh is still passionate about seeing patients from three nonprofit clinics in Seoul for the destitute, the homeless and immigrants “The joy of helping others is so exhilarating that you even feel rejuvenated,” he told The Korea Herald. Growing up in a devout Catholic family, he had wanted to become a cleric and attended a clergy school for five years.  In his fina

ULAN BATOR ― On a vast expanse of grassy meadows in the suburbs, some 25 kilometers east of the Mongolian capital, a group of local teenagers shout and laugh while playing basketball and volleyball at a campsite.As one adult tells them it is time for their next class, they wrap up their games and rush to a one-story building on top of a hill overlooking the river, the mountains and a couple of Mongolian traditional nomadic dwellings, or yurts.The East-West Cultural Development Cooperation Counci

A Korean construction company announced on Monday that it would donate a new apartment to gymnastics gold medalist Yang Hak-seon and his family, after reports of their makeshift plastic greenhouse home stormed the media.Shortly after Yang won Korea’s first gymnastics gold, SM Group announced that it would provide his parents with an apartment in Gwangju that is to be completed next year. Yang’s parents, Yang Kwan-kwon and Ki Sook-hyang, have been living in a 150-square-meter plastic greenhouse i

The Korean Business Council for the Arts has kicked off a four-day art camp for underprivileged, artistically gifted children starting Tuesday in collaboration with K-Auction, the country’s leading fine arts auction house.“The K-Auction Junior Artist Summer Art Camp is designed to offer talented children a chance to achieve their dreams under the guidance of established artists. The camp consists of various programs to help them expand their perspectives and challenge conventional ideas,” the co

At Store 36.5, the nation’s first store dedicated to social enterprises, every item has a good reason to be purchased.A bottle of bean paste supports descendents of ethnic Koreans who were forcibly re-located to central Asia from Russia’s Far East under the rule of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and are now struggling to settle back in the Far East. A jar of plum extract, produced by workers with Down syndrome, helps create more jobs for the mentally disabled. “Store 36.5 is the first effort to brin

For 14 years, Lee Young-soo has brightened the futures of more than 500 people on the margins of society by providing boiler engineering classes.The 57-year-old started his school in 1998 when the Asian economic crisis deprived hundreds of thousands of people of their jobs, homes and dreams. He trained those victims of the recession with skills to work themselves out of poverty.“I saw many people losing their jobs and becoming hopeless. I thought teaching people skills would be much more meaning

Bae Jun-sik, a 59-year-old man who grows ginseng in Gimje, North Jeolla Province, became the first farmer to join the “Honor Society” club of large individual donors. “Honor Society” was founded in 2008 by the Community Chest of Korea and currently has 139 members. It aims to develop a mature philanthropic culture. To become a member, one must donate a minimum of 100 million won ($87,000).“Sharing takes courage to do; I hope this will be a small initiative for the diffusion of charity culture in

Gang Su-suk, 52, and her husband Tag Jeong-sig, 60, have a big family by anyone’s standards, but of their 10 children, eight were adopted and a ninth is being fostered. “When my husband and I had our first son, I felt a strong urge to adopt kids,” Gang said. “My mother passed away when I was little so I know how hard it is for a child to live without a mother. This naturally made me want to adopt.”With the support of her husband, Gang adopted her first child when her eldest son was 5 years old.

79-year-old Ryu receives government order for helping underprivileged studentsFor 30 years, she has been a benefactor for more than 150 students. Ryu Yang-sun, 79, the owner of a small salted fish shop in Noryangjin Fisheries Wholesale Market, has been giving books and scholarships to young students in financial difficulties.“I want to be the pillar of support for poor students so that they can definitely continue their education,” she said.Ryu was born into a poor family in which going to a sch