Our Affiliated
Project: The Sun Duk Children’s Home
in Jeonju, South Korea

 

facts about the Sun Duk Children’s Home:

  • Ages served: Children of all ages receive care at the home. Those enrolled in our sponsorship program typically range in age from 4 to 18 years old.
  • Facility description: Situated on a lovely hillside about two miles outside Jeonju, the home is comprised of a complex of spacious buildings, one of which serves as a public primary school. The grounds include a working farm that the home owns and maintains.
  • Education: School-aged children either attend the primary school at the home or are bused to the public middle and high schools in the city. The curriculum includes core academic subjects and rudimentary English.
  • Academic schedule: In South Korea, the school year typically begins in early March and ends in mid-February, with a long summer break. Children are also excused from classes on national holidays, such as the Moon Festival, which is similar to America’s Thanksgiving.
  • Extracurricular activities: Include daily chores and such recreational activities as volleyball, basketball, baseball and (in the summer) visiting the nearby sandy beach.
  • Nutrition: Children receive three nutritious meals each day, with kimchi (the peppery cabbage-based staple of the Korean diet) occupying a prominent place on the table.

Comprising the lower half of a mountainous peninsula in East Asia, South Korea is truly a nation of contrasts. Although it emerged as an autonomous country in the aftermath of World War II, its rich culture and heritage reach back thousands of years.

Today, this populous nation (with a population density ten times higher than the global average) is renowned for its advancements in technology. However, more than half a century after the Korean War armistice, South Korea is still haunted by the ghosts of its turbulent past. The Korean War (1950-1953) devastated South Korea, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives—both military and civilian—and leaving thousands of children orphaned.

While most South Korean orphanages trace their origin to this pressing postwar crisis, the Sun Duk Children’s Home was actually established in the 1930s by the Japanese, during the era when Korea was a Japanese province.

Today, the Sun Duk Children’s Home continues its mission of providing underprivileged children of this region of South Korea with a safe, nurturing environment, nutritious food and medical care—all while instilling the values of honesty, integrity, compassion for others and dependability. Here, each child receives respect, encouragement—and the opportunity to rise above the difficult socioeconomic circumstances from which s/he has come.