Brother-Sister Doctors in New Zealand

The story of Choi So-yong(30) and Choi Sok-jun(27), the sibling emigres, is becoming the news topic in vogue about Koreans living in New Zealand.
They emigrated in 1984 as middle and elementary school students. Recently, Choi So-yong obtained her doctorate in Vision Science, an inter-disciplinary degree including optometry and opthalmology at the University of Auckland with research in myopia. Not to be outdone, her brother Choi Sok-jun also received his doctorate in Physics from Oxford University.

For the past three years, Choi So-yong has been busy with three different jobs as doctor, assistant professor and running her private practice. His mother, Yi Gil-ja reminisced that her daughter would go "to the research lab at 6:00 every morning, teach students from 10 a.m to 3 p.m. and after working at the clinic until 8 p.m, she would return to the lab. Finally she would return home at 11:30 p.m." Her work did not go un-rewarded with research grants amounting to tens of thousands of dollars as well as university scholarships.

Her brother, Choi Sok-jun is a researcher in theoretical physics at Oxford University after having finished his Masters at the University of Auckland in 1996. He also received scholarships including the extremely competitive 'Domus and Harmsworth Senior Scholarship' awarded to three students among the thousand students at Oxford. A number of his theses have been published in journals with them frequently being cited by his peers. This as well as his spectacular academic career were reason enough to win the Queen's scholarship awarded to promising young researchers.

Choi Sok-jun who also likes classical music plans to continue on at Oxford and her sister Choi So-yong is preparing her research findings to be presented at the next convening of the "World Vision and Ophthalmological Science Council".