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By John Alderman Linton
Around 20 years ago, I started visiting tuberculosis hospitals and sanatoriums in North Korea as part of a campaign to rid the country of that disease. I've been to the North countless times since then.
One night, I was returning to Pyongyang from the countryside in a run-down Toyota van. It was hard to hear much of anything over the whine of the engine, but one of the guides assigned to us by North Korea cautiously struck up a conversation with me.
"I'm told South Korea is a little ahead of us. If that's true, can you tell me about it?" The question caught me completely off guard.
During the Gwangju Uprising, I was framed as one of the agitators behind the demonstrations there simply because I did some interpretation for the citizen committee one day. During the rule of Chun Doo-hwan in the Fifth Republic, I spent two painful years under the watchful eyes of plainclothes policemen.
So for a moment, I was worried that speaking favorably of South Korea in the North might lead to me being jailed or deported. Eventually, I asked the young guide if he wanted a real answer. He seemed sincere in his curiosity, so I decided to humor him.
The first reason South Korea is doing so well, I told the young guide, is thanks to Park Chung-hee.
I'd grown up in Jeolla Province (in the southwest) and picked up regional prejudices as a child. In all honesty, I used to regard people from Gyeongsang Province (in the southeast) as being almost as bad as the Japanese. Of course, when I was a little older, I learned about the accomplishments of Park Chung-hee, a native of Gyeongsang Province.
Park was an autocratic president who rammed through the unjust Yushin regime and perpetrated many undemocratic acts, including the infamous emergency measures. But he still deserves credit for being the first Korean leader in 5,000 years to prioritize the private sector instead of the public sector.
When I asked my young guide if he knew about Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung, he said he knew about Chung's donation of 1,001 cows to North Korea. But I pointed out that Chung wasn't the only figure of his kind in South Korea ― there was also POSCO founder Park Tae-joon, Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull, Daewoo founder Kim Woo-choong and LG cofounders Koo In-hwoi and Huh Man-jung.
Park Chung-hee's greatest accomplishment, I explained, was choosing talented people from the private sector to receive government backing and laying the foundation for the South Korean economy's rapid development. He also launched the Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement), which helped Koreans shake off the victim mentality left by the Korean War. The president made a point of sharing a bowl of rice wine with farmers on the edge of a rice paddy, inspiring all Koreans with hope and the idea that they could prosper.
The second reason South Korea prospered was because of the immense sacrifices made by its workers. Overseas, there were the nurses and miners who took jobs in Germany and the construction workers who worked in sweltering 50-degree weather in the Middle East. And at home, there were the workers at Guro Industrial Park who remained seated at their sewing machines for 16 or more hours a day.
I enthusiastically explained how it was those workers' sacrifices that enabled exports to the United States. That was how South Korea brought in the precious foreign currency that paved the way for national development.
That's not the half of it. The records show that more than 5,000 of the 300,000 South Koreans who were sent to the Vietnam War died in the fighting. That tally would rise above 10,000 if those who died later from complications of trauma were included.
In short, South Korea's development was built on the sweat of its workers and the blood of its soldiers.
Third, I told my young guide that South Korea's strength derives not from men but from women. The country's development was due to our mothers. It was made possible by the value they placed on diligence, thrift and education, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the success of their husbands and children.
The mothers of that time are the grandmothers of today. I think the majority of South Korea's grandmothers should be honored for their contribution to the nation.
Those three things, I concluded, were the driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River."
After listening to my account, the young guide countered with a theory of his own. "That's not how I see things. I think you just chose the right side. We sided with Russia, with the Soviets, and South Korea sided with the United States. That's why you're so well off."
He seemed to think South Korea's strength was not its own, but only borrowed from the United States.
When I train medical students, I often pose questions to help them realize the errors in their thinking. That's the approach I took with my young guide.
"You know about the Philippines, right? While we were at war with you North Koreans, the Philippines helped out by sending a lot of soldiers to the battlefront. Even after the war, they helped us economically by building Jangchung Gymnasium in Seoul."
"The Philippines has been aligned with the United States for a century now. Now you tell me why they're not prosperous today."
My young guide didn't have an answer for that.
That put an end to our conversation, and we remained silent for the hour or so that remained of our drive back to Pyongyang.
While I'd offered a logical rebuttal to my young guide's idea, he seemed unwilling to give up his misconception. But I appreciated his question nonetheless, since it allowed me to ponder the nature of the Miracle on the Han River and how exactly it came to be.
John Alderman Linton, an American-Korean whose Korean name is Ihn Yo-han, is a director at Yonsei University Severance Hospital International Health Care Center
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