William McCloy drives a car made by a Korean company. His refrigerator is Korean-made. So is his microwave oven.
There’s nothing unusual about any of that, South Korea is a high-tech powerhouse. McCloy, though, remembers the poor, war-weary place where from 1967 until 1969 he was a Peace Corps volunteer.
The 64-year-old Edmonds area man served as an English teacher in South Korea. He met wonderful friends and students, but also saw great need. He remembers struggling to stay warm, and teaching Korean health workers about basic hygiene.
Those memories were shaken up recently when McCloy and other former Peace Corps members, including an Edmonds doctor, spent a week in South Korea as guests of its government.
“The changes in Korea since I went there 42 years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, are truly staggering,” said McCloy, who worked until retirement at the University of Washington law library.
Dr. Henry Hochberg, 56, was in the Peace Corps from 1976 to 1978, a decade after McCloy’s service. His work at a clinic in the city of Jinju and in villages where people with leprosy lived spurred Hochberg, a New York native, to go to medical school after his return.
His most lasting image of South Korea is not of a suffering patient or an impoverished village. “I came back with a wife,” Hochberg said.
“Gi was a nurse at my health clinic. We’ve been married 32 years. My most memorable time in Korea was my first glance at her. I still remember the long, light-brown dress that she was wearing,” he said. “She was the most beautiful woman I had ever met — I still feel that way.”
Like McCloy, Hochberg is astonished by today’s prosperous South Korea, a sharp contrast to the place he remembered. In the 1970s, he said, Jinju had about 50,000 people, a few streets and a bridge across a river.
Now, he said, the city of more than 300,000 people has two superhighways and skyscrapers. Hochberg was struck by the state-of-the-art Incheon International Airport, which serves Seoul. “It rivals anything here,” he said.
Along with all the physical progress, Hochberg saw what he perceived as anxiety in the fast-paced society. Also, where families used to be large, many couples now have only one child.
Almost 100 Peace Corps veterans and family members traveled to Seoul the last week in October for the reunion. Guests paid air fare, but hotel and food expenses were paid by the South Korean government. McCloy visited the school where he had taught, and met with former students.
Kathleen Stephens, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea and a former Peace Corps volunteer, was among speakers at the reunion. One presentation covered conditions in North Korea, where people under a repressive regime live largely in poverty. Pictures from the north were “really, really stark,” Hochberg said.
Kevin O’Donnell, a former Peace Corps director, also attended the event, a reminder of the early days. President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961.
“We were all young and idealistic,” Hochberg said. “I really think it was brilliant foreign policy.”
Before volunteers came, he said, many South Koreans had only seen Americans in the military. South Korea is the first and only country to invite former Peace Corps workers back for a reunion, McCloy and Hochberg said.
“Koreans are very grateful people. The government invited us back, and gave us credit. And we would really like to express our gratitude,” Hochberg said. “They cared enough to say thank you, and put their money where their mouth is,” McCloy added.
In a pay-it-forward effort, South Korea now has its own Peace Corps-style agency, Korean International Cooperation Agency, which sends helpers to developing countries in Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.
After their glimpse of the modern place they helped shape, the men hope to organize a summer reunion in the U.S. of those who took the trip.
“We’re motivated to reconnect with Korea,” Hochberg said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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