Flight attendant uses CPR to save child

By Lee Kyung-min

Asiana Airlines purser Kim I-cheol, 45, who saved an unconscious two-year-old girl by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), recalled the moment, saying that nothing went through his mind other than, “I must save this baby girl.”

“All I saw was a baby who was my son’s age lying on the floor with a woman my wife’s age crying next to her,” Kim said.

“The next thing I knew, out of instinct, I performed CPR, praying that she would regain consciousness.”

The incident happened soon after the plane landed at Beijing Capital International Airport on April 8.

While the cabin crew and passengers remained quietly seated to prepare to get off the plane, Kim heard a desperate call from a flight attendant, “Help!”

Rushing to the middle of the aisle, Kim found a woman crying, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

Next to the woman lay a baby who had a weak pulse and whose body was starting to stiffen. The mother said she had her daughter eat some bread shortly before landing, but the baby had difficulty breathing and told her mother, “Something is stuck in my chest.”

Kim immediately pulled the girl’s chin up and started pushing her chest using his index and middle fingers to apply CPR gently at 120 presses a minute.

“I had to act fast, because I knew that she would sustain brain damage if she could not get oxygen to her brain in less than three minutes,” Kim said.

Kim did not perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation because it might have prevented the food stuck in her throat from getting free from the airway.

After five minutes of CPR, the girl started breathing normally and Kim let out a sigh of relief.

“I cannot describe the feeling I had at that time,” he said. “I just felt happy that I could help save the baby.”

Kim, a father of three sons ― nine, seven and four ― declined to take all the credit for the heroic act.

“I just followed the safety guidelines that we cabin crew had practiced,” he said. “Nothing was heroic about what I did. Everybody would have done the same thing in that situation.”