At 94, Korea's oldest university president is still planning for future

At an age when most people have long stepped away from professional life, Lee Gil-ya is still thinking about what comes next. The 94-year-old president of Gachon University is Korea’s longest-serving university president. Lee took over the management of Kyungwon University in 1998 and became its president in 2000, later overseeing the integration of four institutions that culminated in the launch of Gachon University in 2012. She has since led the integrated university for nearly 14 years — an unusually long tenure in Korea, where university presidents typically serve relatively short terms. She attributes her forward-looking approach to decades spent building hospitals and educational institutions, where successes and failures alike taught her to recognize change early and act quickly — an approach now shaping Gachon University’s push to stay ahead in the artificial intelligence (AI) era. “Hardship itself is a kind of success. It becomes the foundation for success,” Lee said in a recent interview with The Korea Times, stressing that failures and setbacks are experiences peo