Musical solace for alienated in Sorok
By Park Si-soo
Staff reporter
It was not the usual grandiose theater or high-end audio system. Neither were audience members in tuxedoes. On a makeshift, humble stage at an old, plywood-decorated welfare center on the remote island of Sorok, South Jeolla Province, Wednesday, Korea's top veteran pop singer Cho Yong-pil and the Britain's Philharmonia Orchestra held a memorable concert in front of hundreds of patients with Hansen's disease.
There was no dress code for the audience of around 600 ― some in wheelchairs clad in hospital pajamas but most dressed casually.
The 60-year-old superstar and members of the orchestra, led by Russian virtuoso Vladimir Ashkenazy, presented a once-in-a-life-time concert for the residents throughout the hour-and-a-half concert. The orchestra performed Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony."
Cho also performed his hit songs.
"This is where I have long anticipated visiting to perform. Sorry, I came so late," Cho told the crowd after singing his two hit songs ― "Dear friends" and "Dream."
In response, some of the audience shouted back "No problem. You came on time."
As the singer promised to return, they hailed him with thunderous applause.
The remote island is the birthplace of a painful history of decades-long segregation, bias and discrimination against lepers.
Sorok Island, a 4.42 square-kilometer island located 500 kilometers south of Seoul, is the country's most isolated region, a place of lifetime banishment and silent death for generations of people suffering the disease.
The Sorok residence for the patients was built in 1916 by the Japanese during colonial rule (1910-1945). The hardships of the inhabitants of the island continued even after independence from Japan. The Korean government continued to quarantine them up to 1963. Until then, children born to patients were sequestered in a nursery.
"I could see my baby only once a month through a window," said Kim Chung-hang, a patient who was taken to Sorok in 1957. "Moving off the island was hard to imagine."
Despite the advance of medical technology and the fact that the disease is rarely transmitted by air, deep-rooted prejudices against those with leprosy dies hard, resulting in a bridge linking Sorok and the mainland opening only last year.
In May last year, then Prime Minister Han Seung-soo offered an official apology to Sorok residents who had gone through "unspeakable suffering amid social discrimination and prejudice."
"I hope that this performance will serve as an opportunity to phase out discrimination and prejudice against lepers at home and aboard, and help the general public correctly understand the disease," Prime Minister Chung Un-chan said in his congratulatory address.
This concert, held on the 87th Children's Day, celebrated on May 5, was organized at the suggestion of the Dowager Viscountess Rothermere, a Korean-born patron of the arts who has provided voluntary services to patients here since 2004. Viscountess Rothermere covered all fees needed to invite the singer and orchestra. Scores of dignitaries, including British Ambassador Martin Uden and Minister of Special Affairs Joo Ho-young, watched the event.
"The mental sufferings of the patients here have been far greater than their physical suffering. We organized the concert to console and please them," said Park Ji-eu, director of the Lady R Foundation's Korean branch, the concert organizer.
Kim Ok-lee, 83, who arrived at the island at the age of 17, said, "It's thrilling to see Cho just meters away."
At the national hospital on the island, established in 1916, a total of 596 patients were hospitalized as of March 31. Their average age is 73. According to the Korean Hansen Welfare Association, the total number of people with the disease in Korea is estimated at 13,734 as of January 1, with their average age at 69.