.........Roberta G. Rice, M.D.
One of the more memorable times
of my service as a surgeon and medical educator in Korea came on
April 19, I believe it was in 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 at Severance Hospital, the Yonsei Medical Hospital located near the South Gate of Seoul. As we left the East Gate area and drove by Seoul National University Hospital area, the streets were filling with students. I particularly remember the medical students from SNU in their white coats. They were marching, carrying signs, and protesting the fraudulent recent election by shouting and singing.
The colon resection operation proceeded smoothly, but as we were completing it, we could hear the sounds of gunfire outside the hospital. We also 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 who were 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. First came those with chest wounds, then the abdominal wounds. The orthopedic patients came after we general surgeons were finished. Supplies ran short. Sponges were rewashed and resterilized. 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 of April will always be a sad remembrance day in Korea. About one hundred students were killed by police bullets on that day.
My cancer patient disappeared
that night. After he left the operating room, he was hidden in a
closet. He had been head of the government ministry which was
responsible for much of the corruption that led to the
revolution. Eventually he ended up in prison. We were able to
keep a good follow-up on him for several years. As far as I know,
he had a complete recovery.
Many prayers were prayed at that time. Several of the dead students had been Christians. The nation mourned their deaths with a national monument at their graves. Korea will always remember the nineteenth of April and the way in which the students died for their beliefs in freedom and democracy.