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Honoring doctor who led Korea’s nurses to Germany
Lee Su-kil / Courtesy of Overseas Koreans Agency
By Lee Kyung-min
In the mid-1960s, Korea was a nation reeling from the devastation of war, short on foreign currency and desperate for economic survival. Thousands of miles away, West Germany was experiencing its postwar Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), but faced a crippling shortage of medical labor.
The man who bridged that gap was Lee Su-kil, a pediatrician whose structural legacy is being reexamined six decades later.
The Overseas Koreans Agency on Monday named Lee (1928-2023) its "Overseas Korean of the Month" for June, marking the 60th anniversary of the historic migration he single-handedly orchestrated.
While working at Mainz University Hospital in Germany in the early 1960s, Lee recognized an opportunity to simultaneously alleviate Germany’s nursing shortage and provide economic relief to his homeland. In 1965, operating largely on his own initiative, he mailed letters to roughly 10 German hospitals to gauge their willingness to hire Korean staff, subsequently coordinating the logistics with the Korean government.
His efforts bore fruit in 1966, when an initial cohort of 128 Korean nurses arrived in West Germany. At a time when overseas travel for Koreans was heavily restricted, Lee personally managed everything from employment screenings to visa issuance, even meeting the arriving nurses at the Frankfurt airport. By 1975, more than 10,000 Korean nurses had followed that pipeline.
The remittances sent back by these women became a foundational pillar for Korea's rapid industrialization and economic development. Beyond economics, the nurses established the bedrock of the contemporary Korean-German diaspora. Lee remained their advocate, ensuring they received fair labor treatment and helping them adapt to an unfamiliar culture.
A dedicated humanitarian, Lee later founded the Korea-Germany Association in Mainz. He also arranged free surgeries in Germany and the United States for some 30 Korean children born with congenital heart defects and helped establish what would become the Korea Polio Association.
His cross-continental diplomacy earned him Korea’s Order of Civil Merit medal in 1987 and West Germany’s Order of Merit in 1998.
"Lee opened that door and stood firmly behind them as a hidden protagonist," said Kim Kyung-hyup, head of the Overseas Koreans Agency. Sixty years later, his bureaucratic ingenuity remains a testament to how diasporic networks can reshape a home country's economic destiny.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.