Korean Couple serves as medical missionaries in Albania for almost 2 decades

Kim Mina, Korea Doctor’s Weekly

In 1884, Horace Newton Allen, an American medical missionary of the Northern Presbyterian Church, arrived in Korea, which at the time was known as Joseon. Almost a century later, Gang Won-hi became the first Korean medical missionary to venture abroad in 1972. Since 1993, Dr. Shim Jae Doo and his wife Dr. Yu So Yeon have provided 17 years of medical service to the people of Albania.

Today, some 271 medical missionaries from Korea are providing voluntary medical services abroad for the residents of communities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. One of the foremost examples is Dr. Shim Jae Doo, who is known as “the missionary of missionaries.” Since his arrival in Albania in 1993, Dr. Shim has served as director of the Shalom Clinic, in addition to taking on various activities outside the medical profession, including efforts to promote local education and social welfare. 

Award from Korea

In December 2009, Dr. Shim was named the second recipient of the “Hanmi Prize of the Most Honorable Medical Doctor” from the Korean Medical Association. This distinguished award is presented to recognize a medical professional’s significant contributions to Korea’s medical development or for commendable service, of a decade or longer, as a medical researcher or practitioner anywhere in the world. The first award recipient was Dr. Lee Jong-wook, a former Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). In particular, Dr. Shim was recognized for his personal dedication and meaningful contributions to the development of health care and medical education in Albania, which suffered from severe economic difficulty after the collapse of the Communist bloc. Indeed, Dr. Shim was most deserving of this prestigious award, in recognition of his 17 years of medical service to the people of Albania.

“The deadline to submit an application for the award was October 1. One of my Kyung Hee University colleagues managed, after considerable effort, to locate my whereabouts and contact me in Albania. He urged me to provide the application materials to support my nomination on September 30. So, I quickly gathered up the materials and sent them out the next day”.

Above all, Dr. Shim was grateful to be recognized for his almost 20 years of dedicated service in Albania. His wife, Dr. Yu So Yean, joined him in Albania upon the completion of her specialist course work, which meant turning down a likely professorship position at her university. This left her colleagues in a state of bewilderment, who could only wonder about this couple: “What are they doing with their life?”‘ Whenever the couple returned to Korea for a brief visit, they felt a sense of disheartenment when they noticed the personal success of their colleagues as professors or medical practitioners.

In part, their discouragement stemmed from the fact that the situation in Albania had not improved as significantly as they had hoped for.

At the award ceremony, however, Shim’s former colleagues all attended to offer their congratulations, and as the recipient of this distinguished award, he could more easily meet with directors of hospitals and clinics to discuss collaborative efforts to improve Albania’s health care situation, He also sought to improve the educational quality of Albania’s dental schools through the promotion of cooperative relations with leading dental schools in Korea. The Hanmi Award thus opened the doors for a number of proposed Albania-Korea projects. 

Medical Education and Training

Dr. Shim’s wife was a few years his junior at Kyung Hee University. An anatomical pathologist, Dr. Yu worked at the Department of Anatomic Pathology of Tirana University in Albania, from 1994 to 2002. In addition to her regular work, she also tutored students and medical technicians, along with undertaking various supplemental activities, such as providing medical books and journals and introducing cellular pathology. For his part, Dr. Shim served as an internist for the treatment of tuberculosis and respiratory disease at Tirana University Hospital, from 1994 to 1998. He was the first to introduce inhalation therapy, and he conducted a seminar program on asthma, in addition to opening a library there in 1996.

“Treating patients is important, but I also hope to promote medical education and medical leadership training. In this way, I can help the Albanians to become more independent. I worked until 2000 in a kind of public institution, while I focused until last year on expanding medical services through the Shalom Clinic, which opened in 2001. This year, I started a project to promote medical education and medical leadership training. I already tried to do this in the 1990s, but it didn’t work out. People at that time were only concerned with urgent needs, such as the availability of medicine and medical treatment. We wanted to set up a system that could help the people here become independent, but they didn’t quite understand our intention.”

In 1992, Albanians communist government collapsed, and the country opened its doors to the outside world; but the bureaucracy inherited from the communist regime made administrative procedures time-consuming and complicated. As the people had been relatively con tent with their previous situation, they were not especially concerned about receiving assistance. The people seemed indifferent because there was no sense of urgency. The lack of adequate infrastructure also hindered the pace of progress. The Shalom Clinic was without electricity from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. Thus, patients who needed an examination with medical equipment could only be treated after five. Because the emergency ward of the National University Hospital was so understaffed, a large number of patients came to the Shalom Clinic, day and night. In 2004, another medical missionary, Choi Jo-young, an internist arrived in Albania to help them out at the clinic.

“People often ask me my secret for staying in Albania for so long. Because we started out with almost nothing, even a little improvement was greatly rewarding. We were happy as things improved, so time passed very quickly:’ which was followed by hearty laughter.

‘We have so much to do’

Even today, it takes 24 hours to fly from Seoul to Tirana, Albania. At the time Dr. Shim first arrived in Albania, the country seemed even more distant because anti-communist sentiments remained strong in Korea. So, why did Dr. Shim and his wife choose Albania? “Life doesn’t always go according to plan, I think. We first learned about Albania through a doctor, a graduate of Korea University who had spent time there. We knew only that the country was mainly poverty-stricken. At the time, I joined a missionary team headed forAlbaniathat was organized by a group which I belonged to”.

But it seemed thatAlbaniahad chosen Dr. Shim. Knowing only that the country had been ruled by communists and the people were very poor, he boarded a plane headed for London with his wife and two children, for a temporary stop on the way to Albania. The lengthy trip helped him acquire a strong feeling for the country, and he read a book about Albania in a London library. “Our plan was for my wife and children to remain in London, while I continued on to Albania to scope out the situation. While looking for materials about the country, I came across some photos of Albanians. With emptiness in their eyes, tired and worn out from poverty, their faces showed an urgent cry for help. My wife felt the same. We thought we had so much to do and that we needed to hurry”.

At the Tirana Airport, however, his Korean family was very foreign to the Albanian people. Interestingly, the immigration officials who decided on the issuance of their visas had heard about North Korea, a familiar country to Albania and its people. They seemed to realize that if there is a North Korea, there must also be aSouth Korea, and their visas were eventually issued. Since that time, so many years have passed and there have been many twists and turns. During the 1997 Albanian crisis, they had to seek refuge inItaly, while leaving everything behind.

“In the beginning, I told the Albanian people that we would live in Albania forever. And I really meant that. But when internal conflict was about to break out, the government ordered us to leave the country for our safety. So, we could not refuse. Not long ago, a younger Korean doctor who had to leave Afghanistan due to the Korean hostage situation described his inner conflict to me. He could not accept the fact that he had to leave everything behind because of the hostage incident. I felt the same way in my situation, but I now understand that helping the Albanians become independent is more important than me staying here my entire life. This year, I started preparing the people here for this eventuality.”

Dr. Shim’s physical health has suffered much from living many years in a country with such a cold, damp climate.

And since you should know when it is time to leave, when is that time for Dr Shim? He said that recently he has given much thought as to whether he is contributing enough to Albania. He believes, however, that he would like to stay as long as possible. The number of medical missionaries has increased in recent years, and he would like to expand the availability of medical services beyond Albania, and even the larger Balkan region.

Gwanghyewon, the first Western-style hospital in Korea that was founded by Horace Allen, was the forerunner of Severance Hospital, which later produced the first Korean doctors educated in Western medicine. Today, Korea maintains an impressive health care system, along with an advanced level of medical science, based on international standards, and some 80,000 medical practitioners are providing services across the country. There are also growing numbers of Korean doctors and medical researchers working abroad. All this started 126 years ago when an American medical missionary arrived in Korea. How might Albania look in another 100 years? Perhaps the contributions of Dr. Shim and his wife will bear similar fruit in Albania.