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gave.”
Jerome and Barrie-Lynn Raik also
got more than they bargained for when
they came to Yecheon-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do
Province, as Peace Corps
volunteers in 1967 shortly after getting
married when they were 20 years old.
The Raiks were originally volunteers
teaching Korean students English, but
they ended up doing much more than
that, saving a Korean girl’s life — which
in turn changed their lives.
Suk-hee, the 8-year-old daughter of
the couple’s host family, had a heart disorder
and needed surgery. When the
couple’s Peace Corps term ended in
1969, the Raiks decided to take the girl
back with them to New York, where
they believed she had a better chance at
receiving quality medical care.
“The hardest part of the process was
getting her a passport, because in those
days it was very difficult for Korean
people to get a passport issued by the
government,” Jerome Raik said. “The
operation had been performed three or
four times in Korea at the time, but no
one had survived. The hospital in New
York that we took Suk-hee to was performing
the operation six or seven times
a week and everyone survived ... so there
was no question that we thought it best
to take her to New York for it.”
It turned out to be the right move,
and the operation was a success. “She is
now living in Gimhae-si and we met her
during this visit,” he said. “We were
happy to see her having a wonderful life
now with her husband and two children,
running a music school.”
The experience also had a lasting
impact on Barrie-Lynn Raik, who eventually
became a doctor and is currently
a professor of clinical medicine and
clinical public health at Weill Cornell
Medical College in New York.
“Barrie had no idea that she would
become a doctor before that,” Jerome
Raik said. “Suk-hee had these two women
cardiologists [in the New York hospital],
and they took such good care of
her. These smart, confident women who
did this wonderful thing were a big part
of the inspiration behind Barrie’s decision
to become a doctor.”
Kevin O’Donnell, the first country
director of Peace Corps Korea from
1966-1970 and the fourth director of
Peace Corps headquarters in Washington,
D.C. in 1971 and 1972, said he was
amazed by how quickly Koreans picked
up the concept of volunteering.
“When we came here in the 1970s,
not many Koreans understood what
volunteerism meant,” O’Donnell said.
“They didn’t know why young American
people like us came here, and there
was even suspicion that this was part of
the CIA and that we were spies or something.
We even had to have a meeting
with a Korean government official, who
wanted to find out what we were doing
and why.”
Now, however, thousands of Koreans
are performing volunteer work in
other countries, providing many of the
same services that Americans offered
here decades ago.
“When Kennedy started the Peace
Corps, we as a nation were already 250
years old,” O’Donnell said. “It’s only
been about 50 years since the end of the
Korean War, and Korea has already
picked up the concept of volunteerism
and is now carrying it out, which I think
is amazing.” Many former Peace Corps
members in Korea have dedicated their
lives to foreign service. U.S. Ambassador
to Korea Kathleen Stephens, for
instance, was in the Peace Corps here in
the mid-1970s.
“There’s a fair percentage — about
10 to 15 percent — of American diplomats
who served in the Peace Corps,”
said Richard Christenson, who came to
Korea in 1967 as a Peace Corps volunteer
and taught English at Jeil Middle
School in Mokpo-si, Jeollanam-do
Province. Christenson spent more than
a third of his 35-year diplomatic career
in Korea, including a deputy post at the
U.S. Embassy in Seoul from 1996 to
2000.
Meanwhile, the group Friends of
Korea was formed in 2000 to connect
nearly 2,000 Peace Corps volunteers
who served in Korea and to promote
amity between the two countries. The
group is now working with the Korean
government, which plans to continue
the reunions once or twice a year until
at least 2013.
Global Korea
U.S. Ambassador to Korea Kathleen
Stephens poses with Yesan
Middle School students in Chungcheongnam-do
Province during
her stint here as a Peace Corps
volunteer in the mid-1970s.
Bill Harwood in 1975 when he
worked as an English teacher at
Kaesung Boys Middle School in
Busan.
Peace Corps volunteers participate
in a health education program at
a village in Gyeongsangnam-do
Province in 1981.
A girl receives a tuberculosis vaccination
at a middle school in
Seoul in 1972. At the time, there
were many tuberculosis patients
around the country.
Friends of Korea recently published
the book Through Our Eyes: Peace Corps
in Korea, 1966-1981, which chronicles
the experiences of volunteers and the
transformation of the country in pictures.
By Park Sun-young
December 2009 korea 31
Provided by Friends of Korea (the group of Peace Corps volunteers who served in Korea)