The Friends Service Unit in Korea
In the summer of 1953, the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker relief organization, was organizing a medical and social welfare team to go to Korea and my husband and I joined them. The Korean War had been going on for three years and it was hoped that a peace agreement would be signed shortly. The Quakers were sending this team in as they had often done following wars to help provide some relief to the people of that country.
The cease-fire was signed in July 1953 and we arrived in September in Kunsan, Korea, a city-town of 30,000 located near the mouth of the Kum River in the southwestern part of the country.
Overseas projects of the AFSC were very similar to the Peace Corps projects which came later. This was to be a short-term project of no longer than years, and individual members of the team were on two year assignments. We were provided food, housing and transportation and $2 allowance each week. Our doctors and nurses would be working in the local provincial hospital, teaching new medical techniques to the personnel and also treating patients. Because of the war, many of the Korean doctors had had no training in newer medical methods for several years. The social welfare member of the group would also work out the distribution of short-term relief aid and longer term employment projects to aid refugees who had fled to the south during the war.
The first group of 14 team members were medical and social welfare workers from England, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Norway and the United States. Most of us had studied Korean, but we also used interpreters in our more difficult conversations with city and provincial officials and the technical work at the hospital. We lived in a Korean house on one of the side streets in town and got to know our Korean neighbors on all sides and got around town by walking or using bicycles.
The following record of the work of the Friends Service Unit was taken on a Rolleicord reflex camera using Kodak Plus X film, ASA 125. All the photographs with KB numbers at the bottom were used by the AFSC national office for publicity purposes.
The first four enlargements were taken in the first months of the project by the official United Nations Korean Relief Administration photographer, Ted Conant, a good friend from whom I learned not only technique but also a sensitivity in approach which allows the viewer to see the Korean people with their dignity intact.
Delores Bremner
