崔松雪堂(1855~1939) 연구

A Study on Song-seol-dang Choi(1855~1939)

This research is about Song-seol-dang Choi, who had succeeded in educating national talented people in spite of her fallen family and the feminine gender in the modernizing period. This work which persue her will be very helpful for researching the modern feminine history and the educational history. Song-seol-dang Choi was born in Gim-cheon City, Gyeong-buk Province in 1855. But her ancestors lived in Jeong-ju City, Pyeong-buk Province. They were involved in Hong-gyeong-lae’s rebellion, and great grand father was executed and grand father was exiled, what is called, the family was fallen. She had heard of her duty of the resurrection of the family from her father since her young days. Being the oldest daughter of three, she decided to find the way to resurrect her family in the palace. She went to Seoul, getting away from the mess of Dong-hak agrarian movement. When she heard of the pregnancy of court lady Um, she predicted the birth of a prince, and prayed with her heart for the prince and the court lady. Thanks to her loyal devotion, she was invited to the palace and became the nurse of the prince Young-chin. Her effort in the palace made emperor Go-jong(Gwang-mu) remove the guilt of her ancestors, and resurrected her family. She had solved the problem which was always with her family since her ancestors’ period. She came out of the palace in late 1907. At the moment, her property became surprisingly enormous. Her property is to be received chiefly from court lady Um and secondly from her husband who was working as a local chief. After getting out of the palace, she built a big house called ‘Song-seol-dang’ in front of Palace Deok-su. She visited her ancestor’s graveyards and decorated it. At her age of 60s, she started arranging her life. She built a house named ‘Jeong-gul-jae’ in Gim-cheon and donated her properties to the temples, and published an anthology ‘Song-seol-dang-jip’. The only task left was to decide what to do with an huge amount of her properties. At the period there were movements of building a highschool in Gim-cheon, but they were lack of money. When she heard of the matter, she changed her mind to donate it to the school instead of donating to the temples. Japanese Government in Jo-seon demanded to build a technique school instead of an academic school, which was supposed to educate the patriots. But with negotiation and effort, she succeeded in building Gim-cheon academic highschool in 1931. After 8 years of founding the school, she passed away in 1939, 84 year old. There were two biographic events in her life. One of them was going to Seoul to solve the problem of her family. The other one is building Gim-cheon highschool in 1930, her age of 75. The first one brought back the glory of her family, and also brought them wealth which was not even countable. The second one, building of highschool in Gim-cheon brought an enormous change in Gim-cheon society, which was glorious for the national history. Gim-cheon highschool succeeded to educate many valuable people in westside of Gyeong-buk Province. And these things were indebted by Song-seol-dang. Song-seol-dang was a woman who lived a life along the process of modernizing. She had done enough to be remembered in the modern feminine history for being beyond the limit of gender, devoting for the national education.