From model to lifesaver
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Kim Soo-yeon, former model-turned-emergency first aid specialist, gives instructions on the Heimlich maneuver to employees of the Seoul Foundation for Culture and Arts last Friday. / Courtesy of Orca EFR
By Oh Young-jin
Kim Soo-yeon, Orca EFR CEO
Kim Soo-yeon is still doing what she likes most ― talking to crowds of people ― but for a different purpose.
The former model used to crisscross the nation on assignments for early morning Today Show-type programs, talking to tens of thousands of viewers through TV.
Now, Kim, 33, still does that but devotes more time to smaller crowds, holding classes instructing people on CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), the Heimlich maneuver and other emergency first aid procedures.
“Helping people in trouble is good and saving lives is even better,” she said about her new calling as an instructor of lifesaving techniques.
In some countries, people are well versed in first aid techniques such that the revival rate of victims reached by someone qualified in CPR is as high as 70 to 80 percent, she said. “In Korea, it is incomparably low and that means a lot of people die unnecessarily or suffer from damage because first aid is not administered in time.”
She recalled that one of her former students had contacted her and thanked her for the techniques she taught him, which enabled him to save one person who collapsed in the street. “It makes me feel proud of what I am doing,” she said.
With seven instructors, she runs Orca EFR, the internationally affiliated first aid instruction unit.
It is her TV skills that she thinks make her an effective instructor. She can speak with an attention-grabbing voice. “I like to talk on the mic.”
Kim is in high demand from corporations and public organizations for her classes that she hosts at her center in southern Seoul. Her four-hour unit of instruction combines theory and practice on CPR on children as well as adults, use of AED for revival through electric shock, the Heimlich maneuver for stopping patients from choking and first aid against bleeding, among others techniques.
It was by chance that she took a first aid course less than a year ago. “When I was learning to dive in deep water, the course was offered and I took it.”
“The power of serendipity,” she said, recalling her first TV appearance on behalf of a Miss Korea-cum-TV personality, who fell sick and couldn’t make it. “I was tall at 170cm in 2002 and the program director asked me to stand in.”
She has not encountered a chance to put her skills to their ultimate use. “Still, I am grateful for that but if it comes I know I am ready.”