By Han Yoon-ji
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a brave man in his 50s! A real life Superman came to the rescue of a four-year-old boy who fell from the sixth floor of an apartment.
Lee Joon-hee, 51, heard the desperate screams of Park, 33, whose son was clinging onto the veranda railing for his life.
Park had gone down to retrieve some laundry that fell from her apartment on the sixth floor. Her child Nam, 4, was looking down at his mother, and had slipped through the bars of the veranda. Luckily, Nam had been holding onto the railing, which was the only thing that kept him from plummeting onto the ground below.
“It wasn’t a normal scream,” remarked Lee. “It was a scream let out in the most dire moment in one’s life.”
Lee, who has a 17-year-old son himself, sprinted 30 meters and spread his arms wide, much like a goalkeeper ready to block a shot. At that moment, Nam’s fingers slipped, and he fell right into Lee’s ready arms. The entire moment lasted only 15 to 20 seconds.
“It all happened so fast. It’s a miracle. I couldn’t really think, not even for a second,” Lee told CBS’s “Kim Hyun-jung’s News Show” in a hospital in Daegu.
True to his words, catching a 17 kg child falling from 15 meters high is indeed a miracle. “It would be the same as being hit by an object travelling at 70 km per hour,” an expert said.
Although he is unable to move comfortably due to injuries, Lee is recovering in hospital. The boy luckily suffered from just a nosebleed, and made Lee’s day when he called him and told him, “I love you, mister!”
Netizens on the Internet have had their hearts warmed by the news of Lee’s bravery. “I was so touched that I actually cried,” said IRUN**. Another person remarked, “From a mother’s point of view, I can only feel incredible gratitude towards this man.” “Only someone with his wits about them can perform such an act. He’s a real life Superman,” commented another netizen t**.
Lee, however, humbly said, “Anyone would have done the same. I just hope that when the boy grows up, he’ll become someone who puts others before him.”