4-fingered pianist sends hope to NK

By Nam Hyun-woo

Lee Hee-ah

Lee Hee-ah, 27, a pianist with only four fingers, said she hopes her music will play a role in helping to thaw the frozen relationship between the two Koreas.

Lee, a renowned pianist for her touching performances, was born with only two fingers on each hand and no legs below her kneecaps.

Despite such disability, she found strength through music.

“I started playing the piano since I was six. It was not about becoming a pianist, but more about strengthening my hands,” she said in an interview.

Also, her hands were too soft — like jelly or rubber — to engage in daily routines, let alone play the piano.

However, she said a harsher obstacle that she had to overcome was her intellectual ability which is relatively lower than ordinary people, because of a cerebro-vascular accident.

“Continuous training helped me gain lingual abilities, but still my mathematical capacity remains at a very low level,” she said.

She could not understand the difference between quarter notes and eighth notes, making it almost impossible to read a score without her mother’s assistance.

Her mother, Woo Gap-seon, helped her practice hard — more than 10 hours a day when she was practicing Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu. The practice helped her overcome her handicap and made her stand as a pianist.

Lee’s story led her to meet the late President Kim Dae-jung twice during his term and in 2000 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to improving inter-Korean relations.

“I was first interested in unification between the two Koreas when East and West Germany reunified. I watched the late Hyundai Group founder Chung Ju-yung lead cows to North Korea in 1998. Also the reunion of dispersed families during Kim’s term inspired me to participate in activities to help reunification,” she said.

Lee supports a local agricultural association which helps North Korean farmers by sending seedlings and farming tools.

Despite the recent escalation of tensions in the Korean Peninsula, Lee is optimistic about the outlook of the relations between two Koreas.

“There are other routes to deliver through Chinese or Americans who can still visit the reclusive regime. Agricultural support is one of the most innovative methods of aiding the North, since it helps people there develop agricultural industry,” she said. “It will also contribute to balancing the economic inequality between the two Koreas before their unification, like the Germans did.”