Korean Schweitzers abroad

By Kim Jong-chan

Deputy Managing Editor

During my schooldays, I learned about Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) who helped poor and sick people in Africa. I remember that our primary school textbook set aside sizable space to introduce his activities in sleeping Africa. Many of us respected him. He and his wife built a hospital in Lambarene, western Gabon. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize for his many years of humanitarian efforts.

Like Schweitzer, a number of Korean doctors have done great jobs abroad, helping put the country, an aid recipient decades ago, on the global map as a vital donor country. Korea has become a model state whose dramatic transition from rags (the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War) to riches helps highlight the significance of international aid.

They are spending their life, helping the sick and the poor. I was moved, among others, by what Park Luke has done in the Philippines for the past 22 years. It was when I watched part of the five-episode TV series depicting medical care Park provides. The program, titled “Human Theater,” was aired by KBS 1 from Jan. 16 to Jan. 20.

If Park, now 53, had stayed in Korea as a surgeon, he could have made a fortune and enjoyed a comfortable life. But he made up his mind to leave home to care for ailing Filipinos after he participated in providing free medical services in the Southeast Asian country.

He built a hospital with money he had and with the help of his acquaintances. He also bought a bus to help patients living in remote areas. A co-worker, also a Korean who manages non-medical affairs for him, drives the bus. The duo have visited more than 50 villages to provide medical care. Sometimes when they visit mountainous areas, they have to walk and cross an old viaduct. Some of Park’s friends from his home country, also doctors, frequently join their journey.

Park underwent surgery to treat pancreatic cancer in his early 30s. Seven years ago, he underwent operations for stomach cancer. Now, he is suffering from diabetes and hepatocirrhosis. In an interview, he said since he has long fought chronic illness, he could understand the people’s pains. The most difficulties facing him are not loneliness ― although his family is in Korea ― but his poor health.

Another Korean who has returned what Korea owed to foreign countries in the 1950s-60s is Park Mu-yeol, 46. He went to Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, with his wife and two children in 2002, and built the Koramtola Hospital with other Korean doctors near Dacca, the capital. Medical fees are one-tenth of those at other hospitals. He has so far conducted as many as 3,000 operations.

Park, called the Korean Schweitzer in Bangladesh, won the first Father Lee Tae-seok Service Award created in memory of the late priest who provided medical care in Sudan from 2001 to 2010. The award ceremony took place in Busan on Jan. 13 to mark the second anniversary of Lee’s death.

The reason why Korean doctors cannot leave Bangladesh is simple ― Bangladeshis need doctors. Doctor Lee Seok-ro originally planned to stay there for three years. But he kept extending his stay. As a result, 17 years have passed since he began work at the hospital.

Lee Tae-seok took the Hippocratic oath, but he quit as a doctor and was ordained as a priest. He then went to the village of Tonj, southern Sudan, and continued to do humanitarian work before he died of large intestine cancer at the age of 49.

The governments of the two countries have taken posthumous steps to help accomplish his unfinished work. Under a memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides Monday, a general hospital and a medical college will be established in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. The African country became an independent state in July last year after years of civil war.

Lee was also an educational pioneer. He laid the foundation to build schools for Sudanese children with donations collected through the Internet Daum café.

Sudanese call him the Schweitzer of Sudan. He will be greatly missed by Koreans as well as Sudanese.