Alice Appenzeller (November 9, 1885-February 20, 1950) began and ended life in the Korean city of Seoul. Her parents, who had both grown up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, arrived in Seoul on April 5, 1885 as part of the American Methodist missionary community. It was said that Alice was the first American to be born in Korea. Alice was home schooled until her parents' first "furlough", when she was sixteen. Upon the family's arrival back in Lancaster, she was enrolled in Miss Stahr's School for girls, which later became the Shippen School and eventually the coeducational Lancaster Country Day School. She graduated in 1905 and, along with four classmates, began her first year at Wellesley.

Alice sang in the choir throughout her Wellesley years, was active in volunteer activities, and developed an extensive network of friends. After graduation, she returned to Shippen to teach German and history. But her religious vocation was strong, as was her love for her childhood home in Korea, and in 1915 she was appointed by the Methodist Church as a missionary teacher at the Ewha Kindergarten School in Seoul. Her responsibilities quickly increased: by 1918 she was Principal of Ewha primary and high schools, and in October 1922 she became President of Ewha College.

She had spent the earlier months of 1922 earning a master's degree at Columbia University Teachers' College in New York City, and she returned to New York in 1927 and 1930 for further graduate work. However, her religious life and her career as an educator of girls and women were anchored in Seoul. In 1932, she was ordained as a minister and appointed to the First Methodist Church in Seoul.

Under her leadership, Ewha, which was Korea's first college for women, developed a campus and grew to serve a student body of about 400. Along with her spirituality and intellectuality, Alice's entrepreneurial skills were evident. According to her 30th reunion yearbook notes, "A missionary's furlough is the time for promotion and cultivation of the home end, and each of my three holidays has been busy in that work. Last time Miss Hazard [Wellesley President Caroline Hazard] gave me $1,000.00 for our library fund. . . ." She also remarks that she considers herself "fortunate in having seen so many" classmates during her visits to the United States.

While her work was widely honored -- in 1935 she was awarded the Blue Ribbon medal, the highest Korean honor given to women, and she received an honorary Doctor of Pedagogy from Boston University in 1937 -- international politics gradually intruded on institutions such as Ewha, with its connections to United States missionary organizations. Korea's history was long dominated by the conflicting ambitions of China and Japan to control the peninsula. Japan annexed Korea as a colony in 1910 and in 1931 imposed military rule. The Sino-Japanese war began in 1937; World War II started in 1939. Alice reported, "I was evacuated in the disheartening days of 1940."

She spent the early years of World War II with friends in the United States. In 1942 she went to Hawaii, to teach religion in the Korean Methodist community. As soon as she could, however, she returned to Ewha. From 1946 until she was fatally stricken while leading a chapel service at Ewha in 1950, she served as a teacher and religious leader of women in South Korea. Her class's 45th reunion record book, which was dedicated to her memory, states that "most of [South] Korea's prominent women leaders are Ewha graduates."

Alice's term of service was to have ended in 1951, and leaving Korea was a fate she had viewed with "regret." Her grave is in the Yang Whado Cemetery, Seoul.