I Remember

One of the more memorable times of my service as a surgeon and medical educator in Korea came on April 19, 1963, the time of the student revolution when the “Grandpa President,” Syngman Rhee, was overthrown after his fourth election as the president of the Republic of Korea. The morning of April 19 I operated at our Ewha Woman’s University Medical Hospital at the East Gate of Seoul. A patient needing a colon resection for cancer was scheduled in the afternoon . As we left the East Gate area and drove by Seoul National University Hospital area the streets were filling with students. They were marching, carrying signs, and protesting the fraudulent recent election by shouting and singing. The colon resection operation at Severance proceeded smoothly but, as we were completing it, we could hear the sounds of gunfire outside the hospital. Also, we suddenly saw a growing pillar of black smoke out of the north window. The students had set the government newspaper offices on fire because of its failure to tell truly what was going on. The police were shooting the students demonstrating on the streets outside the hospital. In a short time we had more than one hundred students with gunshot wounds fill the downstairs halls. We operated throughout the night and until late the next afternoon…Supplies ran short. Sponges were rewashed and sterilized. Students poured in to give blood. We lost our first patient. He had been hit by a “dumdum” which exploded, damaging and destroying his bladder and lower abdomen. The nineteenth day of April will always be a sad remembrance day in Korea. About one hundred students were killed by police bullets on that day. --Roberta G. Rice, M.D.