Linton thanks Korea for recognizing his family

John Linton's friendly jovial face would instantly calm a patient, but his passion would also engage people in causes that better human rights. Linton poses during an interview with The Korea Times Tuesday at his office at Severance Hospital at Yonsei University, Sinchon, Seoul.
/ Korea Times photos by Choi Won-suk

By Kim Ji-soo

John Linton, 55, calls himself a "Jeollado" or Jeolla Province person. The southwestern region was once known for political oppression and lesser development compared to other regions in South Korea. It is the home of the Gwangju Democracy movement, the late former president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae-jung. But for Linton's family, it has been home since his great-grandfather's days.

Linton, director of the Severance Hospital International Health Care Center at Yonsei University in Sinchon, now lives in Seoul where he works.

"When I say I am a Jeollado person, it means that I value equality, a fair society, and upholding the integrity of the marginalized and the weak," Linton told The Korea Times.

Linton's choice of words illustrates how this fourth-generation member of a renowned U.S. missionary family has carved out his life path in Korea as a doctor, an activist at times with political affiliation and a human rights campaigner.

Recently, on the 66th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, South Korea's National Commission for Human Rights awarded him the "Geunjeong" or Order of Service Merit.The order recognized his work for helping North Korea fight tuberculosis and spreading the Korean-style ambulances that provide pre-hospital care, among other things. The order is awarded to civil servants and teachers.

"My ancestors gave a lot, but I only received from Korea, and this gift more than anything comes as a deep appreciation for my family's works," Linton said in Korean.He only switched to using English for certain words.

John Linton poses amid his staff members at the Severance Hospital's International Health Care Center at Yonsei University in Sinchon, Seoul, Tuesday. There, he works with his staff speaking in Korean including the dialect of the southeastern Jeolla region, even as he tends to international patients seeking Korean medical treatment.

After his great grand-father-in-law Eugene Bell (1868-1925) arrived in 1895 as an American missionary to engage in medical and evangelical activities, the succeeding generations followed.

Linton's grandfather William Linton came to Korea when he was 22 and engaged in the independence movement as well as establishing medical, educational and missionary activities for 48 years, while his father Hue Linton set up some 600 churches in remote areas of South Jeolla Province. His brother Steve Linton, chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation, worked to cure about 150,000 tuberculosis patients in North Korea. John Linton has worked alongside his brother in improving human and welfare conditions in the North.

He said he received three major gifts from Korea: he was accepted into the Yonsei University's medical school on special admissions for foreigners, he then became the youngest director of the Severance Hospital International Health Care Center and became a Korean citizen two years ago.

He used the occasion of the Geunjeong Order to appeal again to President Park Geun-hye and political leaders about the need to aid starving people in the North.

"If we have food, nearly 1. 2 million tons of suffuse food, we need to share it with the starving in the North," he said. "It's very simple but very important that we remember starvation by death is also violation of human rights."

Linton, who has been to the North working with his brother Steve Linton, 29 times, points out that the South should take notice that during the famine in the North the children survived.

"I was talking with my driver during one visit, and he said when food was short the grandparents would first yield food to children, then the mother and the father would give up their food, so that at least the children, starving, can live on," he said.

Such engagement toward the North may not be an easy decision for the South Korean government, Linton acknowledged, but worthy works required a sacrifice.

"Do you know who my mentor is? Pastor Son Yang-eun, who adopted a man who killed two of his sons," said Linton. "Other people may have done ill toward me, but that doesn't exonerate me from doing ill," in a way to explain that's what human rights is all about.

His big smile and friendly eyes may speak otherwise, but his booming voice and energy illustrate his passion for the two Koreas.

Linton said that he was once very split — in the third year of medical school — over whether he was an American whose society stressed rules or a Korean whose society largely rested on relationships, but he settled that he was who he was.

"I decided then and there I am what I am that I am a Jeollado-person," he said. This has meant sometimes working as an insider and sometimes as a mediator involving Korean issues. He was a target for expulsion by the Korean government in 1980, when the Gwangju Democracy Movement took place. He was targeted because of his role as translator for the foreign press on behalf of the then civilian army. He was asked to leave or return to the hospital without engaging in the movement any longer. He wanted to stay, so he returned to the hospital.

Then in 2012, Linton was on the transition team of President Park Geun-hye as vice chairman of the committee for national integration. Linton believes that how the South deals with the North will be the litmus test to how it incorporates growing multiculturalism.

For the immediate future,Linton wants to promote medical tourism, and help Korean doctors become known internationally. On his table, he has name cards in English, Korean, Russian,Arabic and Japanese.

"As we know, Koreans are the only ones that use steel chopsticks. I want to help Korean doctors spread its talent worldwide," he said.

Does this not go against the missionary cause of his family?

"Korea sends out missionaries world over now," he said, adding that much of the evangelical work in Korea has been completed.

When he retires, he wants to return to his hometown of Suncheon and spend time with his friends and elders. In the same vein, Linton wants Koreans to look to their old values.

"We should learn from the wisdom and morality of ‘ondol' gatherings," Linton said, referring to the traditional Korean style of heating in the old days when the entire family or communities would gather in a room with heated floor and share knowledge, wisdom and ethics.

"If we want to keep the relationships we value, we need to keep the rules," he said.