Thank you, angels

CHOI KYEONG-HO
The author is the head of the Gwangju Bureau of the JoongAng Ilbo.

“I am too old to take care of patients,” Margaret Pissarek, who died on Friday, wrote in a letter dated November 21, 2005. The “mother of Hansen’s disease patients” left Sorok Island with her colleague Marianne Stoeger as they didn’t want to be a burden. When the two nurses left Korea, all they had was a suitcase.

They first came to Korea in 1959, when they graduated from a nursing school in Austria and began volunteering through a rescue organization. Stoeger was dispatched to Sorok Island in Goheung County, South Jeolla in 1962 and Pissarek in 1966.

The island, about 16 kilometers (9.94 miles) away from the county office, is called the “Land of Divine Punishment.” When the Japanese Government-General turned Jahye Clinic into Sorok Island Rehabilitation Center in 1934, it became an island that kept Hansen’s patients. They were treated like criminals, living under persecution and quarantine.

The two were like mothers who wiped blood and tears off the patients. They administered medicine and fed the patients with difficulty eating food. Even the doctors were reluctant to touch the patients, but they touched patients’ festered bodies with bare hands to disinfect them. They were called the “mothers of the Hansen’s patients” because they were devoted to everything. They helped build a tuberculosis ward and children’s hospital on the island. They recruited helpers and prepared a fund for the patients who were forcibly discharged due to marriage and childbirth.

The two served for more than 40 years and did not receive any compensation. They lived minimally and practiced dedication and love from their 20s to 70s. When they left the island in 2005, they said they were over 70 years old and were going back to Austria.

Goheung residents were saddened by the news that Pissarek was fighting cancer. She suffered from dementia and spent her last days at a nursing home. Stoeger visited Sorok Island for the 100th anniversary of the hospital in 2016, but Pissarek could not.

Pissarek, who always wanted to be called “Sorok Island Grandma” all her life, recalled her life in Korea and said she was happy. Her love for the island can be seen through the words from Father Kim Yeon-joon, who met her in Austria in September 2017.

Kim said, “She remembered all the names of her neighbors on the island and wanted to know how they were doing.” Like all mothers, she had endless affection for the patients. This is why we must forever remember Pissarek as the mother of Hansen’s patients.