Leukemia-hit foreigner gets aid via Internet

By Park Si-soo

A foreign radio DJ in Gwangju was able to receive emergency blood donation from a number of netizens via social networking websites.

Michael Simning, a popular DJ at an English-language radio station in the city 340 kilometers southwest from Seoul, was hospitalized last Friday for acute leukemia.

An urgent blood transfusion was needed to extend his life and get surgery safely. But the hospital, Chonnam National University Hwasun Hospital, had trouble securing sufficient amount of blood due to the rarity here of the blood type of the 37-year-old Canadian: B Rh-ve.

Only a few hundred people here have the blood type.

His friends posted messages urgently looking for people with the blood type for donations on their blogs and other social networking websites such as twitter and Facebook over the weekend.

The messages got members of the foreign community in Gwangju to launch a campaign for blood donations to help Simning, who hosted a news show titled “City of Light” until last Friday.

Scores of people have donated blood. His blog and other social-networking websites were also flooded with messages written to cheer him up.

Some Korean celebrities such as comedian Kim Mi-hwa and journalist Kim Joo-ha, also retweeted the message to their Twitter followers.

“He currently gets a blood transfusion every two or three days,” Kim Mi-young, producer of City of Light, told The Korea Times, Wednesday. “He will soon get surgery. All staff of our station wish him a healthy recovery.”

Kim said the program is hosted by another foreigner temporarily, adding, “The seat is reserved for him.”

Landing on Korean soil in 1995, Simning married a Korean in 1998. He has organized a variety of volunteer activities designed to support orphans in South Jeolla Province.