Capital: Seoul
Area: 98,480 km²
Population: 48.4 million (July 2005)
Ethnic groups: Koreans
Official language(s): Korean
Religion(s): Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism
Currency: 1 South Korean won = 100 chun
SOS Children's Villages' activities in the country
Whilst on home-leave in Austria in 1961, Maria Heissenberger, a missionary, approached Hermann Gmeiner to tell him about how badly off the children in South Korea were at the time. In 1963, Hermann Gmeiner went to see for himself the children who had been orphaned during the Korean War and were then starving. He returned to Europe with a gift of two sacks of rice, which he had been given. He then started the famous "Grain of Rice" fundraising campaign in which individual grains of rice were offered for sale. It was immensely successful. One year later the national SOS Children's Village Association was founded and in 1965 the first SOS Children's Village outside Europe went into operation in Daegu, in the southeast of Korea. Seven years later the first youths had outgrown the SOS Children's Village and so the first SOS Youth Facility was built in Daegu in 1972.
Further SOS Youth Facilities in the capital, Seoul and in Suncheon followed. In 1980, two SOS Children's Villages, one in Suncheon, in the south of the country and the other in the capital, Seoul, were built almost simultaneously. To begin with, the children who were taken into the SOS Children's Villages were almost all refugees. Later more and more of them were social orphans. South Korea went through a period of economic boom in the 1970's and 80's. The economic crisis, which followed, brought high unemployment and social decline for many families.
An SOS Social Centre in the form of a day-care-centre was built on the grounds of SOS Children's Village Seoul in 1982 to help the people living in the neighbourhood. Since 2002 it now offers leisure clubs for older children too. The SOS Vocational Training Centre in Pohang was completed in July 1991. SOS Children's Village mothers and co-workers are trained here before starting employment and the centre also offers in-service training.
By the end of 2004 SOS Social Centres were established in all Korean SOS Children’s Villages providing child day care centre services especially also for children with special needs from the neighbourhood. In autumn 2005 the SOS Vocational Training Centre in Pohang was extended by a holiday camp.
At present there are three SOS Children's Villages in South Korea, three SOS Youth Facilities, one SOS Kindergarten, one SOS Vocational Training Centre and four SOS Social Centres.
Website of SOS Children's Villages South Korea
(available in Korean and English)