YonJi Scholarship

Yonsei University has a building called Appenzeller Hall, first built during the Japanese colonial period. When we were students in the Department of Theology, it was where we spent much of our time. Offices and classrooms filled the upper floors, while the basement felt wholly ours. Student council rooms and club rooms stretched down the corridor.

There, we searched for paths toward faith and meaning. We wrestled with difficult books, sang together, and sometimes sat alone, writing or thinking. Looking back, what truly passed between us there was care. We call all of it sharing.

The scholarship was first proposed by Lee Jaehoon, class of 1995. He hoped to offer even a small measure of help to younger students facing questions much like our own. With that intention, alumni and friends began this small fellowship together.

“Yeonji” is short for “the basement of Yonsei University’s Department of Theology.”

We often ran into Jaehoon in the basement club rooms. We still remember the relaxed smile with which he greeted us, and the low voice with which he sang while strumming a guitar.

Like many of us, he wandered through the confusion of youth, yet to us he was never simply passive or extreme. He was a quiet and sensitive person.

After graduation, life grew busy for all of us. Yet from time to time Jaehoon would reappear, and a single sentence from him could call back something forgotten and make us look again at ourselves.

Last autumn we heard from him after a long silence. He told us he had cancer. Time then moved in a blur. We heard the illness was worsening quickly, then later that treatment seemed to be going better than expected.

We felt as though we were riding a roller coaster, afraid we might lose him. But Jaehoon himself remained unexpectedly calm. He spent his time carefully, putting things in order, and said he had received so much in life. Until the final moments, he kept asking how what he had could be shared with others.

<YonJi Scholarship> is the conclusion Jaehoon reached after much reflection. We will carry forward the meaning he left behind.

We remember a road trip once taken with Jaehoon. We drove in turns along narrow provincial roads, spent hours watching spring flowers, and finally stopped at a southern harbor.

There were almost no people there. On the railings above the breakwater, countless yellow ribbons had been tied. Even in the smallest wind, they turned over again and again, trembling fiercely.

As it once was for us, this may be a difficult time for you. We can only imagine. It may be more painful and isolating than we can fully know. While you endure that time, we want to help, even if only a little. Thank you for taking the hand extended toward you.

We hope for a solidarity as quiet and as persistent as those small ribbons.