Legacy of two nurses
Marianne and Margaret were nurses. From the early 1960s until the 2000s, over 40 years in all, they played a crucial role in making a settlement for lepers on Sorok Island in Goheung County, South Jeolla Province. The two nurses took care of them with devotion and love for over 40 years before returning home to Austria in 2005.
In 2015, a patient who missed the two nurses donated 5 million won to a religious organization on Sorok Island. The organization made a commemorative business association to help poor people at home and abroad. Goheung County also built a memorial hall to commemorate the two nurses’ spirit. In 2019, locals nominated them for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Margaret died of a heart attack on Sept. 29, at the age of 88, in Austria. The writer visited a memorial altar erected at the entrance of the memorial hall in Nokdong, Goheung County, and delivered condolences there.
At the entrance, three impressive sentences caught my eye: “Hope should be displayed. Hope must be felt. We must all live in hope.” The nurses lived that way. Poor but with warm hearts, they looked after their patients.
In the early 1960s, about 6,000 lepers on Sorok Island were living like refugees. Young couples expecting babies were forced by the organization to have an abortion. As abortion became a bigger social issue, Roman Catholic fathers in Gwangju asked Catholic churches in Austria to send nurses to Sorok Island.
As a result, Marianne and Margaret came to the island and helped pregnant mothers give birth and raise their children. They also looked after other patients.
In those days, doctors and nurses treated patients with gloves on, but Marianne and Margaret worked with bare hands. They lived in a private house but often invited patients over. They listened to their worries and encouraged them to live positively.
Thanks to their cheer, one couple, a blind man and a disabled woman, got married. One young man who had been turned away from his parents due to leprosy overcame the disease with the nurses’ love. Many children of infected parents became priests and nurses.
Furthermore, Marianne and Margaret helped the patients materially. When someone got married and had babies, they were forced out of the camp. At that time, the nurses asked acquaintances in Austria for assistance and gave the couples settlement funding to live outside the camp.
In the early 1960s, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world, so it couldn’t help the patients. Instead, the two nurses appealed to organizations in Austria and helped build various living facilities. They also asked their families and priests at home to send medicine and medical supplies so they could continue treating their patients.
As a result of Marianne and Margaret’s efforts, the number of patients began to decrease sharply. As the nurses grew old, they became too weak to continue their demanding work. One day, they returned to Austria.
A Korean nurse said, “Every day they began and finished by praying. Their calling as a nurse was to help patients with hands and feet. They lived so. Before they left Sorok-do, they burned all their traces and left penniless.” Later, a Catholic organization took up practicing the two nurses’ teachings. Others who remembered their love dedicated themselves to doing the same.
The writer is a retired English teacher who published a book titled, "Flower Is Flower."