I am an editorial writer at The Korea Times, focusing on foreign policy, North Korea and domestic politics. My key areas of interest include North Korea, foreign interference in elections, election integrity, cyberattacks and human rights. Prior to joining the Editorial Board, I served as both Politics Desk editor and Culture Desk editor. During my career, I have reported on the Presidential Office under the Lee Myung-bak administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Assembly.
After losing daughter, scientist spearheads anti-cancer crusade
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Lee Gae-ho, a professor of chemical science at Chungnam National University in Daejeon City, speaks during an interview at his home in Okcheon, North Chungcheong Province, on Dec. 23. / Korea Times
By Kang Hyun-kyung
By Kang Hyun-kyung
OKCHEON — Chemical scientist Lee Gae-ho’s second home in the rural city of Okcheon, about an hour drive east of Daejeon, is a place that reminds him of the deep pain of loss.
His daughter, Jie-un, used to spend some time there after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 when she was a college senior and underwent successful surgery and ensuing chemotherapy.
Her cancer recurred in 2009, though, years after she recovered from the surgery and went back to college to finish her major, industrial design. Cancer cells spread fast throughout her body, and finally took her life. She was 25.
After spending a year of anguish after losing his daughter, Lee came to realize that there were many cancer patients and their families who, like him, were living in sadness and despair. He was determined to do something to help them.
He has since opened his second home as a classroom for a lecture for people through which he shares his stories to educate them not to repeat the mistakes that he and his wife made while watching helplessly their daughter dying.
His lecture became popular; and hundreds of people have signed up for the weekly program. Because of the limited space at his home, many of them have to wait until their turn comes.
Every Saturday, tens of cancer patients and their parents cram into the living room of Lee’s 99-square-meter house which stands on 16,520-square- meter of farmland.
People come from all across the nation; and even Koreans who live in the United States, Japan and Austria have signed up for his lecture.
Approximately 9,000 people have attended the program.
Professor Lee Gae-ho opened his second home in Okcheon as a classroom for his weekly stop cancer lecture. He called the building an institute of In the Beginning campaign. / Korea Times
Lee, a professor of chemical science at Chungnam National University in Daejeon, learned that cancer is not a disease that can always be curable. However, he believes, it can be preventable if people maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle.
“In the past decades, there has been a lot of change in what and how we eat and how we lead our lives and in most cases such changes have regressed, not progressed,” he told The Korea Times.
“Imagine that we shop in a grocery store. What kind of cabbage would you buy? You’ll choose the clean one that was not eaten by worms. Organic vegetables usually don’t look like that because farmers don’t use pesticide.”
Lee has launched the so-called “ItB” campaign calling for going back to basics when it comes to food. ItB is an acronym of In the Beginning, a title he created to refer to the stop cancer program.
He initiated the campaign after realizing that the cancer patients he met repeated the mistakes he and his family had made.
Cancer in its early stage was first detected in his daughter’s breast in 2006. She underwent the standard treatment — surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Lee built the second home, which is now used as the headquarters of the ItB campaign, around that time to help his daughter recover from surgery. It took almost two months for him to find the right location that met the tricky conditions — a green, quiet, waterfront place surrounded by mountains. It also had to be near his home in Daejeon.
After finding the location in Okcheon, it took a year for him to finish getting the house built. His daughter spent time there, became healthy and went back to her college.
“It was the biggest mistake to allow her to go back to the busy campus life,” Lee said. “After the successful surgery and ensuing chemotherapy, all of us, including my daughter, thought that she completely recovered and that the cancer was gone forever. But we were wrong.”
When the cancer recurred to Jie-un in 2009, her situation was worse.
“Cancer cells spread so fast throughout her entire body shortly after she graduated from university. It was out of control,” Lee said.
The chemical scientist learned a painful lesson from his daughter’s death — removing the tumor from the body doesn’t mean that the cancer is over.
It can recur anytime if the causes of the cancer are not removed, he said.
“In retrospect, my daughter went back to college with her immune system not fully recovered. The chemotherapy and radiation therapy she underwent after surgery killed not only the cancer cells but also normal cells,” he said.
He cited busy and stressful lifestyles and unhealthy diet habits as some of the leading causes of cancer.
As long as those root causes are not completely removed from people’s lives, he noted, they could relapse into the cancer again.
Lee searched for empirical studies and scientific papers about cancer and even flew to foreign countries to meet cancer survivors to learn how they were able to overcome the disease.
Lee said the high cancer occurrence rates among Koreans might be associated with Korea’s quick rise as an industrialized country from the poverty-stricken one in the wake of the Korean War.
“The older people worked hard to make a living and get out of the poverty trap. To save time, they ate fast and chewed less, a common habit most Koreans have and one that could affect the health of their large intestine,” he said.
Such dietary habits could be responsible for Korea having the world’s highest colon cancer rate because eating fast and chewing less can negatively affect the functioning of the large intestine where trillions of bacteria are there to help people maintain a strong immune system, he said.
According to the World Health Organization, the colon cancer occurrence rate per 100,000 people in Korea is 48.
It is higher than that of the United States where people eat a lot more meat. Red meat is cited as one of the factors that increases the risks of cancer.
Lee said Koreans eat too much meat at one time and that bad diet habit could leave them vulnerable to colon cancer.
His cancer prevention lecture touched cancer patients and their families. Lee Yoon-jeong, an Incheon resident whose father is fighting colon cancer, said her six-hour round trip on Nov. 2 to attend Lee’s cancer prevention education was meaningful.
“Professor Lee told cancer patients not to blame themselves and encouraged them to think positively,” she said. “Family members usually have the same dietary habits because they share dishes at home. The fact that one of their family members has cancer could inspire them to stop bad dietary habits.”
Kang Seon-ok a breast cancer patient who lives in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, said Lee’s lecture is a life-saving program.
She was diagnosed with cancer in early November and took Lee’s lecture before surgery.
“Before I took the program, I felt uneasy and lived in despair. But I came to think positive and was determined to fight cancer with a healthy diet and lifestyle.”