Korean veteran mountaineer Um Hong-gil’s foundation has built its third school for children in Nepal.
The Um Hong Gil Human Foundation announced Thursday that it had completed building a new school in Lumbini, some 170 kilometers southeast of Kathmandu.
The construction of the school started in April 2011 and it was recently finished with the support of outdoor brand Millet, the Industrial Bank of Korea and also multinational insurer AIA Life, according to Um’s foundation.
Located in a remote village, the two-story school consists of five classrooms, a computer room and a library on a plot measuring 489.46 square meters.
The Shree Sidhartha Gautam Budha Human School also includes a medical room and a village center for the local residents, the foundation said.
Korea’s representative climber Um Hong-gil poses with Nepalese students during the building completion ceremony of The Um Hong Gil Human Foundation’s school in Lumbini, Nepal on Feb. 21. (The Um Hong Gil Human Foundation)
Speaking at the building completion ceremony, Um said the school is a part of his mission to build 16 schools for children in Nepal, where he became the first Korean and the seventh climber in the world to reach the summit of all 14 8,000-meter peaks in the world.
Um, who has now reached the 16 highest points in the world, described the mission as “climbing another 16 peaks.”
“We won’t stop our work until we achieve our goal,” he said.
Um set up the Human Foundation in 2008 with the aim of spreading humanism and respect toward nature, and also build 16 schools in remote areas of Nepal.
Um’s first school opened in May 2010 in the mountainous region of Pangboche, Nepal. The school, which sits around 4,000 meters above the sea level, is claimed to be the world’s highest school.
The second school was built in February 2011 in Trishuli, 95 km northwest of Kathmandu, where the residents are isolated from civilization and scrape by through farming on narrow terraced fields.
By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@heraldcorp.com)
