This article is by Kim Ho-jeong and read by an artificial voice.

THE HAGUE - On the morning of Aug. 8 in The Hague, a city on the western edge of the Netherlands, the Korean flag fluttered in a narrow alleyway - a sign that the Yi Jun Peace Museum was open.

A small doorbell at the modest entrance rang out with the clear voice of 86-year-old museum director Song Chang-joo: "Push the door hard and come up to the second floor!"

The staircase behind the door was narrow and steep. The light brown wooden floor gleamed from years of polishing. Every wall and table on the museum's three floors was filled with documents and photographs - more than 200 artifacts collected by Song and her 89-year-old husband Lee Kee-hang over 30 years.

"There's still so much more to find and organize," they said firmly.

Bouquets of fresh flowers, carefully arranged, were placed throughout the exhibits - a clear sign that the museum was tended to with constant care.

The couple opened the museum on Aug. 5, 1995, without ever hiring staff or outsourcing the work.

"Only the outside windows are cleaned by someone else. This place can't be damaged," Song said.

Commuting by train from Amsterdam, about an hour away, they raise the Korean flag at 10:30 a.m. each day and take it down at 6 p.m., crossing the city to return home. Their only break was during the three years of pandemic closures and when Song and Lee each received the Order of Civil Merit - Lee in 1993 and Song in 2023 - and the museum was briefly entrusted to others.

Independence activist Yi Jun died here at age 48 on July 14, 1907, after traveling to The Hague with Yi Sang-seol and Yi Wi-jong as special envoys of Emperor Gojong to protest the 1905 Eulsa Treaty - an agreement that forced Korea to surrender its sovereignty - at the Second Hague Peace Conference.

Denied entry to the conference, the envoys held a press conference instead, issuing a statement that opened the first chapter of Korea's 40-year independence movement. The museum building was formerly the De Jong Hotel, where the envoys stayed, with their rooms preserved as memorial spaces.

The couple said that their 30-year stewardship began by chance, with a newspaper column.

In July 1992, Song read a freelance column in the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad lamenting that the hotel where a young Korean had died for his country was being left to decay.

"We decided we had to buy it - if not this building, then the one next to it," Song recalled.

At the time, they had no plans for a museum. Built in the 1620s, the property was in danger of demolition. The first floor housed The Hague's largest billiard hall, open until 1 a.m., while the upper floors, abandoned by the owner, were occupied by drifters.

"It was like a garbage dump," Lee said. "It was old and was likely to be taken down, but we couldn't let history go to waste."

The building, owned by the city of The Hague, was purchased for $200,000 with help from the mayor, who recognized its historic value. Song, born in Pyongan, and Yi, from Kanggye - both in North Korea - fled to the South after the 1950-53 Korean War. Song graduated from Ewha Womans University and taught for nine years, while Lee graduated from Seoul National University and was posted to Amsterdam in 1972 by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency before launching their own trading company in 1975.

Their interest in the envoys began earlier. In 1988, during the Seoul Olympics, the couple attended a memorial service for Yi Jun, later holding a similar event in The Hague in 1991. Lee spent years combing archives, libraries and bookstores for any mention of Korea, uncovering items such as Yi Jun's death certificate. From the activist's granddaughter in Seoul, they obtained his handwritten resume and petition calling for the dismissal of a judge who had aided the Eulsa Treaty.

"There are some essential questions that need to be addressed," Song said.

"One of them is, 'Why were they not allowed into the peace conference? 'P...