A Japanese serves elderly Koreans

A giver: Kunihisa Iwaki, right, reads to Shim Jae-geun at Seoul Bukbu Geriatric Hospital recently. By Moon Gwang-lip

Shim Jae-geun, a 72-year-old patient at Seoul Bukbu Geriatric Hospital, nodded and smiled from time to time as Kunihisa Iwaki, 72, read a Japanese book to her at her bedside.
It is part of the volunteer work that Iwaki, a former kacho (director, in Japanese) at a trading company in his hometown in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, has been doing for patients at the Korean hospital for the past 11 months.
Like many other elderly Koreans, Shim can understand Japanese.
She was forced to learn the language as a child during Japanese colonial rule here.
Iwaki is well aware of that because his father served as a translator for the Japanese military police in Korea for five years.
Today, however, there is no time for hostility.
“He never gives us a moment of boredom,” Shim said, adding that Iwaki also reads her Korean books, despite his limited Korean skills.
“He helps us a lot,” Shim said. “Sometimes he is like a friend and sometimes like a brother. We don’t have any hard feelings toward him.”
Another patient, Joo Young-soon, 75, resting in the bed next to Shim, also spoke well of Iwaki.
“Everybody in this hospital likes him. We have nothing but thanks,” Joo said.
Driven in part by affection for Korea and in part by guilt for what his father did in this country, Iwaki applied last October for a volunteer position at the hospital, which treats around 200 elderly patients hospitalized for dementia, stroke and other geriatric diseases.
At 7 a.m. every Monday to Friday, Iwaki leaves his one-room apartment in Hwayang-dong, Seoul, which he rents for 230,000 won ($240) each month to work at the hospital.
His daily routine at the hospital typically runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
He keeps busy with a variety of work ―?helping patients with their meals, changing their clothes and washing them.
He also helps take wheelchair-bound patients from their rooms to rehabilitation and other hospital facilities.
Iwaki enjoys his work.
“I wish I could speak Korean better so that I could help them better,” Iwaki said in Japanese.
His interest in Korea blossomed after he visited the country for the first time in 1982.
An amateur hiker, Iwaki climbed many mountains in Korea, including Mount Halla on Jeju Island, Mount Seorak and Mount Jiri.
“I loved those mountains,” he said. “ I even went up Mount Jiri several times in one month.”
But it was his father’s death when Iwaki was a high school student that first opened his eyes to Korea.
He happened to see a record of his father’s life and discovered that his father was involved in the Japanese colonial rule in Korea from 1910 to 1945.
A sense of regret kicked in, he said, and over time, he wanted to do something for Koreans.
After retiring in 2005 from a second job as a cook for a newspaper company, also in Ishikawa, Iwaki traveled to Seoul and found a group of elderly Koreans idle and lonely in Pagoda Park, Jongno, central Seoul.
Iwaki said he decided at that time to help elderly Koreans.
He went back to Japan to earn a license as a “home helper,” a form of hospice work.
His family in Japan ― his wife and two daughters ― agreed to his plan to go to Korea last year.
“They have been cooperative with what I have been doing here,” Iwaki said of his family, which includes two grandchildren.
“They told me to take good care of patients while I am still strong, before I get too old to do so.”
He had planned to learn Korean in Seoul before working at the hospital, but he delayed that for fear that it would distract him from helping patients.
He said, modestly, that he is not sure that he is helpful to the patients.
“Every time I go home, I worry that the patients might not have been satisfied with my work,” he said.
Hospital officials appreciate his contributions.
“He really provides a big help to patients, especially those who are in rehabilitation,” said head nurse Oh Hyun-san.
“All the nurses are grateful for what he is doing here.”
Park Seung-chun, a social worker at the hospital, said Iwaki has never been absent during the past 11 months, except for days when he had to go back to Japan to renew his tourist visa.
“He is always the first to reach out and give help, to greet people, to talk to them ― not everybody can do that,” Park said.
At the end of this month, Iwaki will go to Japan, but he plans to come back.
“I want to come back after learning to play the guitar and dance,” he said.
“I want to make the patients happy.”
Many would say he already has.

By Moon Gwang-lip Staff Writer [joe@joongang.co.kr]