By Hyon O'Brien

When our younger daughter was in high school, every Tuesday she would go with her classmate to a local shelter for battered women to read to their children. Our older daughter, who was in college at that time, also volunteered each week by going to Harlem to teach teenage mothers who had dropped out of high school how to read.

My first volunteer work happened a little later in my life than theirs: during my senior year in college, I joined about 150 other international college students from Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Korea, and three Peace Corps volunteers from the United States in a three week project of land reclamation work on Anmyeon Island, South Chungcheong Province.

This was in the summer of 1968 and it was the first time I had ever heard of the Peace Corps. By that time the United States volunteer organization was seven years old since its launching in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Peace Corps Korea was a mere two years old, when the first group arrived in 1966. By the year 1981, when group K-51 became the last group to volunteer in Korea, more than two thousand volunteers had served in Korea.

Currently, about 7,700 Peace Corps volunteers are serving in various fields (education, health, business development, environment, agriculture, etc.) in 75 countries. During the past 48 years, more than 200,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries around the world (Africa 37 percent, Latin America 24 percent, Eastern Europe/Central Asia 20 percent, Asia 7 percent, North Africa/Middle East 4 percent, Pacific Islands 4 percent and the Caribbean 4 percent)

Upon founding the Peace Corps with the vision of world peace and friendship, President Kennedy motivated the volunteers who were leaving the States to countries around the world to become the first volunteers: ``Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy. There will be no salary, and allowances will be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and meet basic needs. Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they are stationed _ doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language.

``But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying. For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps ― who works in a foreign land ― will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace.''

Last year, the Korea Foundation and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade made a bold move to invite former Peace Corps volunteers to a series of reunions in Korea. This October was the third such reunion sponsored by the Korean government. Eighty-eight former Peace Corps volunteers and family members came and participated in a week-long reunion program from Oct. 25 to 31. Some of them came a week early or extended their stay to explore Korea and to visit with old friends from their time in different parts of Korea.

I married a former Peace Corps volunteer, a K-3 (that is, the third PC group in Korea), whom I met through my volunteer work in Anmyeon Island in 1968, an unexpected blessing that came from my being a volunteer.

In the following year, I was hired as one of the Korean language teachers to help train two Peace Corps groups, K-10 and K-11, in Hawaii for four months. Some of the students and teachers from that training program have become our lifelong friends. Two of them are now library directors in North Carolina even sharing the same professional choice as me. When they were serving for two years (1970-1972) in Daejeon teaching English at Chungnam University and Daejeon College (now Hannam University), respectively, they had a baby son.

When they finished two years, they returned to America with three-month-old Jason. For this past October reunion, Jason joined his parents to visit the country of his birth. It was so heartwarming to watch Jason skillfully handling chopsticks and enjoying kimchi and other spicy foods (which he has loved from an early age, possibly due to the land of his birth?) while appreciating everything during his stay. It was evident that his parents over the years shared with him their experience in Korea and their love of Korean things and Korean people. In a letter of thanks to us, Dave and Eliza Robertson wrote, ``Our trip to Korea was even more meaningful because Jason was with us and we got to introduce him to you. Now he knows that everything we've been telling him about the long-lasting relationships we built in the Peace Corps is true.''

At a dinner reception hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade during the reunion week, one of the 88, Dick Christenson, a K-3 PCV who became a diplomat serving in Korea as the deputy chief of mission in Seoul, among other places, eloquently summed up in a toast what it meant for Peace Corps volunteers to serve and live in Korea.

``We former Peace Corps volunteers all agree on one point: that the Korean people gave us much more than we gave them. The Korean people helped us understand the world and our shared humanity. They taught us the truth of Buddha's teaching that to seek enlightenment, one must travel to faraway places. They shared with us their homes, their way of living, their way of thinking. They taught us to appreciate, to understand, to talk less and listen more.

``So we count ourselves lucky that we were assigned to serve in Korea, a country that made the most of whatever small things we were able to contribute, and whose people appreciated our sincerity, even when sincerity was all we could offer ― when the work we did was not of much help. Our gathering here now is proof that Korea is indeed a country that generously appreciates those who come sincerely. Of the 139 countries the Peace Corps has served in, none but Korea has invited all its volunteers back to say thank you. But it is we, more than Koreans, who owe gratitude. To the Korean people, tonight we say simply this: thank you for all you have given us. We are lucky to have known you ― and to know you now, anew.''

Need I say more? Indeed, the rich rewards and unexpected blessings from being a volunteer are immeasurable dividends that surprise us and keep us there. Look around to see where you can volunteer. You may find the best of friends, as I have.

Hyon O'Brien, a former reference librarian in the United States, has returned to Korea after 32 years of living abroad. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.