Song Ja
South Korean politician (1936-2019)
Song Ja (Korean: 송자; 6 December 1936 – 22 August 2019) was a South Korean politician and academic. He had served as chancellor of Yonsei University and Myongji University, and as Minister of Education.
Career
Song was named a professor of business management at Yonsei University in 1977. He was elevated to the position of twelfth chancellor of Yonsei University in August 1992. In November 1994, Yang Dong-kwan of the Seoul Western District Court ruled that his nomination to the chancellorship had been invalid because he formally had not yet applied for restoration of South Korean citizenship at the time, and so was legally stateless. Song had naturalised as a U.S. citizen in 1978, but gave up U.S. citizenship in 1984. However, an appeal court ruled in May 1995 that his lack of citizenship was not sufficient reason to invalidate his nomination. In January 1997, Song announced that he was resigning from his professorship at Yonsei University.
In June 1997, Song was appointed chancellor of Myongji University, also in Seoul. He became Minister of Education in 2000 during the presidency of Kim Dae-jung.
The public source identifies “Song Ja” as south Korean politician (1936-2019). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Song, South and Korean.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12602981. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2019, 1977 and 1992.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Song Ja” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.