Korea—Today

LT. COL. MONTAGUE: Since last we met ten valued members have been called to their reward, including two Past Presidents, namely, the late Mr. W. Eason Humphreys, who was President in 1933-34, and the late Mr. R. A. (Dick) Stapells, who occupied the chair in 1919, and who endeared himself to so many by continuing his club activities through the years until ill health made this impossible. May they rest in peace.

Today offers us a welcome opportunity to become better informed on some important aspects of the current situation in South Korea--a Far Eastern country which not so long ago was receiving front page attention in the daily press.

Few are as well qualified to accomplish this for us as our guest speaker, Dr. Richard F. Brown, who left there only last June after six years' service as Chief of Preventive Medicine for the United Nations Organization. Dr. Brown has had over twenty years of varied experience in the Far East. He speaks Chinese and Japanese and is considered an authority on oriental ceremony, superstitions and art. He has lectured to the Royal Asiatic Society.

Dr. Brown's colourful background should be particularly intriguing to any of us who are inclined to be "stay-at-homes". Coming to Canada from the United Kingdom at an early age, he commenced his education here. He served as a soldier in World War I for some three and a half years, being one of the youngest members of the 134th Battalion, Canadian Highlanders, C.E.F.

He attended Trinity College and graduated from the University of Toronto as an M.D. in 1928. Later in 1943 he secured his diploma in Public Health from the University of Toronto. Meanwhile, he had been awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship in Union Medical College and had spent fifteen years in China.

During World War II he served with the R.A.M.C. as Deputy Director of Medical Services in Burma, India and China.

From 1948 to 1951 he was Regional Medical Officer with General McArthur, attached to Supreme Command--Allied Powers in Japan. He was the only Canadian in the Health and Welfare Section.

Dr. Brown was posted to South Korea in 1951 with the special mission of the prevention of disease, starvation and unrest. He might well be described as "an old Far East hand" who when he is "at home" can be found at Caulfield, B.C.

He will address us on "Korea-Today", with emphasis on the United Nations Rehabilitation Program there. It is with the greatest of pleasure that I introduce Dr. Richard F. Brown.

DR. BROWN: Mr. President, and Gentlemen: I assure you it is a great pleasure for me to be here today, not only to address you here but also to be back home in Canada. I almost enter Canada now as an immigrant. I left in 1928, after graduating from the University of Toronto, with a short internship in New York and a year in Ophthalmology in London, and I went directly to China. From then on I have only been in Canada for six months or three months at a time.

But today it is very difficult to credit what is happening in Korea today. Had I been in Korea for six days or two weeks, like many people, I could have told a lot about Korea. I could have told about the people and the political situation, I could have written a book. Fortunately, I went in 1951 on sixty days, temporary duty, and it turned out to be six years and two months from the time I left.

Korea, as you know, does not make headlines today. Wars and conflicts make headlines. Poverty, rehabilitation and political turmoil--I don't see much in the Canadian news or in the European papers, about these problems. But the Koreans today are very much alive to the problems that confront them and I want to say, with a great deal of emphasis that in my own opinion the problems in Korea today are not oriental problems, they are not Korean problems. They could be settled over night. The problems in Korea are very much the same as the problems the world over. They are due to changing conditions and world development in which the Koreans have been caught up. They are essentially a backward oriental nation, but they have the backing of not only the United Nations, but also the Americans, and that has made it very difficult to rehabilitate in the terms of what many Americans would like to do.

A Korean told me just before I left Korea ... he had all the money he wanted . . . he turned to me and said, "You know, I don't think Korea can afford to be rehabilitated." And I think it is a very good saying, referring to the way some of the friends to the south would like to rehabilitate Korea.

The Koreans are fiercely independent. They love to sing and they are very good singers. They love to drink and they are quite good drinkers. They love to fight. They are very difficult to deal with on a governmental level.

At the present time the President is Syngman Rhee. I don't know what the Press will think of what I say, but he is not a good friend of mine. I know him very well. He is rather old and he is surrounded by the Army. That is the army is in complete control of Korea today.

In the early days in Korea, when they thought the war was over, in 1950, the United Nations moved in under the name of U.N.O.E.C. of Korea. At the time we moved in we were in conflict with the American Army. The Army wanted to do the rehabilitation. This went on for six months. It had been decided as soon as hostilities ceased that the Army would take over.

Hostilities never ceased, so UNKRA, which is the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agencies, which is a United Nation Organization, moved in. The rehabilitation programs of Korea are such that they need a number of divisions, one of which was Health and Welfare, one of which was Economics, one of which was Power Stations, and another was Agriculture.

I was appointed Chief of Preventive Medicine as you have been told, with a mission of prevention of disease, starvation and unrest. It was essentially a task of preventing disease and assisting the numerous refugees coming from the north to settle in the south.

Under that organization there were seventeen doctors, representing eleven countries. At the time there were two Canadians. You may be interested to know that both Chiefs of Preventive Medicine were graduates of the University of Toronto--Dr. Stewart and myself. Dr. Stewart remained a very short time. He came over with the World Health Organization, and when the amalgamation took place he decided to come back home.

We had two doctors from Mexico, two French doctors, doctors from all the countries represented. We had a Portuguese doctor and eleven different nationalities. You can imagine the difficulty in coordinating the doctors. Some did not even speak the language. We had two Greek doctors. When one Greek doctor arrived he didn't understand a world of English, and we didn't understand a word of Greek, and the Koreans didn't understand either English or Greek. It was very difficult, so we sent him to school for six months to catch up--and he had to give up.

In 1951 the army was very much concerned with the amount of disease and the exposure of the United Nations troops. In 1951 we had something like 53,000 cases of smallpox, with 7,000 deaths. We had something like 32,000 typhus cases--not all diagnosed as typhus, and with a high death rate. There was a large amount of typhoid. One of the first tasks was to get the disease under control and it was done by a mass immunization program. In that year, it was almost incredible, but with a population of 21 million we actually vaccinated 32 million people. Some were done twice . . . we just grabbed them wherever we could.

However, last year there was not one single case of smallpox in the whole of Korea.

This program has continued. The program now is being taken over by the schools and the Koreans have passed a law themselves, making vaccination compulsory before going to school and in the first three years of school up to the twelfth year. That is what is done each year in Korea.

I can say the same of typhus and typhoid. In the early days we would hold little seminars or demonstrations for the United Nations doctors who had never seen a case of typhus in their lives. We had Generals and Captains in the American Army, and in the British Army and a few Canadians, too, and we would collect these cases of typhus and bring them down to show and demonstrate the treatment for typhus, smallpox and typhoid. One of the outstanding things of that program was the immunization program.

In June, the United Nations were actually running 112 hospitals, directly under the control of the United Nations, having been supplied by the United Nations with beds, clothing, drugs, blankets. The hospitals, as were our doctors, were divided into eleven provinces and areas, with a doctor in each one, and two in headquarters, I would go around, all through the country, running the 112 hospitals.

It was also a great surprise to the troops to know the number of leprosy cases. In Korea at the time I left, there were 45,000 lepers. I call them lepers . . I am always checked up because there is no such thing as a leper . . they are lepers to me. There were 45,000 registered in nine leprosariums, and there are something like 100,000 not in institutions.

Just recently one of our doctors, an English doctor, Dr. Michael Smith, who was with the United Nations , and now with the International Leprosy Association, attempted to coordinate control of the leprosy situation in Korea.

The United Nations also provided nine preventoriums for children. Leprosy, of course, as you medical men know, and I am quite convinced, is a disease of childhood. It is a pediatrician's job to detect the disease in childhood, to get them when they are young, and take them out of school and treat them.

Again, and this was another conflict in the Army, we ran 92 venereal disease centres. Everyone--the Generals, the Majors, the Colonels wanted a conference on the high V.D. rate. We used to have great battles, with the army, and especially with the Americans. They would call a Conference on Venereal Disease and in ten minutes it would be turned into a Prostitutes Conference. They wanted prostitute control, they wanted clean prostitutes. We said there is no such thing as a clean prostitute, what you want is more V.D. control in the troops. We had terrific battles with the army. Some of the doctors had to leave Korea because they talked up to some of the army officials and wanted to reduce the rate.

I could tell many stories about that campaign. Let me tell you that the Koreans themselves were quite free of venereal disease before the United Nations' troops descended into Korea.

At the present time there are something like 55,000 Eurasian children left in Korea, looking for homes. That doesn't take into account the number that have already found homes in the United States. It is exceedingly difficult to get homes for coloured children and there are a good many in Korea, I assure you.

Another very interesting phase of our program is the reconstruction program that is taking place outside the public health field entirely.

But I would like before I leave the health field, to mention another name as one who contributed a great deal to the Canadian effort, and that is Miss Helen MacArthur, of our Canadian Red Cross.

I am very much opposed to putting a name on aid. I loathe seeing a "Norwegian Hospital", being supported

by United Nations. I don't like to see a tuberculosis institution organized by one country one year and then dropped. I would like to see all aid under United Nations aid. Our own Canadian children under our Red Cross, and I am afraid this has had very little publicity, contributed $81,000 toward the tuberculosis program in Korea. Our Canadian children through the Canadian Branch of the Red Cross were responsible for the organization of a Tuberculosis Home for children and orphans, chiefly Eurasian children. I understand they are still continuing to support that institution in a teaching capacity. I think our Canadian children should be very proud of the contribution they have made. I am sorry they have had so little thanks and so little publicity.

I feel very strongly that aid in Korea should be a United Nations effort. When I left Korea I had the choice of staying. United Nations is pulling out. Most of the doctors have gone. There was only one left and he has probably gone since I left. I had the choice of staying but I said, No, I would not work under the conditions. It is being taken over entirely by the Americans in an advertising program. I do not believe in giving aid to any country and planting a flag on top and surrounding the aid by certain restrictions and then calling it Aid. That is not aid. The Americans say they want more advertising, more publicity for what they are doing. They say the United Nations doctors, including myself, the French and the Portuguese, do not give enough credit to what the Americans have done. That may be, but I feel very strongly that any big power when they wish to give aid should give it from a humanitarian point of view. It should be given as aid and not for advertising purposes.

I don't think any great power needs publicity stunts. I don't think any great power needs advertising.

It was my misfortune to attend a ceremony in Pusan. Senator Knowland was there. . . . He came there purposely in advance, to receive a ship that was coming over. They kept the dock closed off for one and a half days. They had bands playing and flags waving. Nobody could use the road. The Koreans and the Americans were lined up--just for a show to see a ship come in with aid for Korea. And it was probably a good bet that it was United Nations aid.

I also read in the papers about another publicity stunt one day. It took place in Amman. I was there about six weeks ago. They had actually erected a grandstand and had floodlights to show the arrival of American aid by plane to Jordan.

I don't know whether you call it aid or a publicity stunt. To me, it is a pure publicity stunt. I, as of the United Nations, want nothing to do with it. I felt very strongly that aid should be given from a charitable reason, and great nations and great powers should use diplomacy, charity and love when they see fellow countrymen in distress.

In Korea it wasn't all hard work. Korea is a very beautiful country. As you know, the sad division in Korea is responsible for a lot of the trouble there. The area south of Seoul was formerly known as the bread basket of Korea. You get the lovely valleys and plains and very good roads. They export rice for money.

In the north of Korea you get the coal mines and the tungsten mines and the metal mines, and also practically the only water power is in North Korea.

One of the United Nations problems was to re-establish and rebuild the Wonsan Dam. That was a five mile project, ready to be opened this year.

But travelling around the country, one of the greatest difficulties for the medical man is to reconcile the uneducated Koreans and the doctors in Korea. Some who are not doctors give treatment: many of the nurses have never given treatment. There are 520 public health districts and we did run 125 dispensaries all through Korea. That was a United Nations effort. I have had my troubles with those two. I was called once to Mokpo, which is a port on the coast because they were using and demanding a great deal of morphine. I had to go down to see why they wanted all the morphine.

When I asked them why they were using so much morphine, they looked at me as though I were completely stupid. They said, "Don't you know Mokpo is a seaport." They were trying to push the case for more morphine and they said, "Wherever there is a seaport there are a lot of sailors."

I said, "What is the connection between the seaport and sailors, and the morphine you are using."

They said, "Well, the sailors that come in have got scabies."

I said, "And what is the connection between the sailors and scabies and the morphine?"

They said, "Don't you know the morphine stops the itch?"

It is very difficult to deal with these people. There are a lot of supplies, very modern supplies, like auremycin and terramycin, and the Koreans use them for almost anything. They use them for coughs and colds, and it is very difficult to tell them that they are dangerous drugs to use. That is one of the trials and tribulations of the doctors working there, having these people with old heads using drugs that they are not capable of using.

Also, if you don't know, I want to make quite clear that Korea is still an oriental country in respect to superstition. I have collected a large number and I have actually seen what they do. In the springtime we always have trouble with dogs. No foreigner can keep a dog because the Koreans believe they are very good for tuberculosis.

Our last experience with a dog was a very sad one. We had a little dog in Japan. My wife came over last December. Wives were not allowed in previously. In the rush the little dog had not been vaccinated and it had to stay in Japan for six weeks. It cost a lot of money. We had him for two weeks and he was so fat and lovely. Then he disappeared and he probably went to somebody for tuberculosis treatment.

I actually had working with me a nurse who had taken a year of graduate training in the University of Toronto. You would expect that she would know better. She had a husband who was a suspected T.B. We helped her a great deal. Her husband was supposed to be a Presbyterian Minister.... He had a church but couldn't work. One day some of the Koreans came to me in great distress and said that Mrs. So-and-So last night paid $25.00 for a dog and in a ceremony gave it to her husband for T.B. treatment.

I was furious and said, "Is that all we have done after two or three years teaching? They are just going back to their own treatment." I called her in and actually she had done this. You can imagine how distressing it is to work with these people and find after that time that is all the progress you have made.

On the other hand, there are some very, very good Korean doctors, and I couldn't pay too high a tribute to some of the missionary hospitals, particularly, Severance Hospital, and the hospital in Seoul, supported by our own United Church of Canada. Dr. Struthers is on the staff. At 71 he went out and got married and left Korea. I hope he is going back. We had another Canadian doctor, Dr. Frank Murray, from Nova Scotia.

They are very discouraged at the trend in Korea. Korea is an oriental country and they are trying to follow western methods, based entirely upon western aid. When it ceases, of course something will happen.

Through the American General Robertson, the United Nations, also the United Nations troops, donated half a million dollars which was a large sum in those days to build a T.B. Chest Clinic in Seoul. They dallied so long that by the time they got the foundation in the cost was up to $800,000. That is partly completed now but one of the big problems in Korea today is T.B. There has never been a true census taken of the actual cases but they quote something like 4.5 million of T.B. cases, of which 600,000 are in immediate need of hospitalization. I think when we left Korea there was something like 2,000 beds available for T.B. cases. As a result, the United Nations has stepped in with an amount of money to establish and control ambulatory treatment for the unfortunate T.B. people. I think at the time I left there was something like 82 ambulatory treatments for T.B.

I have dwelt largely on the medical side because that was my particular field. There has been a great deal done, probably too much done in rehabilitation, or what is called rehabilitation, which the Koreans themselves cannot handle. At the present time they are building two

large fertilizer plants, to cost five million dollars. The cost has now gone up to eleven million. They were supposed to have been completed last year. When I left they were still not completed. A lot of the so-called aid to Korea is syphoned back into those firms who take on the private contract to build things such as the fertilizer plants. The unfortunate farmers that I went around and talked to were not the least enthused about the fertilizer. They said, "We can get fertilizer from Japan, we can get fertilizer from Germany, and we can get it shipped in from other countries for one-third the price it will cost when the fertilizer plant is completed."

Those are some of the problems you have from the outside when you are letting out contracts for rehabilitation.

We have the same problem in the cement factories. There are three large cement factories being built, one by a Scandinavian firm, which will also run to five and six million.

They have something like five power plants completed for South Korea and at any time the North Koreans can cut them off. When you realize that Seoul is less than twenty-five miles from probably the most powerful Communist armies and guns in the world, it makes you shudder to think what would happen over night if they should march again.

I, myself, have a great deal of confidence in what Korea can do. I feel very strongly, that the Koreans could do far more for themselves than they are doing. It is another question to bring these people up to Western standards from where they were.

You still see the fields being ploughed by oxen. Actually, this summer I took pictures of two women hauling ploughs.

Whether it is ready for modern development, whether it can be rehabilitated in terms of what they had before, I feel very keenly that rehabilitation in Korea should start from education.

It is, of course, a country where disease is rife. We have at the present time all sorts of people working there but they are not doing enough, in the field of prevention.

The German Red Cross has a large hospital, the Swedish Red Cross has a hospital, the Italian Red Cross is there, and up to a short time ago in Pusan alone there were seven modern hospitals, built since the war and there were none before.

I did get complaints, very righteous ones, from the Medical Association. All this is free treatment: The Churches are giving, the Americans are giving, the United Nations are giving and the American armies are giving. This is squeezing the doctors out entirely from practice and they are very annoyed. What is going to happen is that all Korea will turn over to free medical care.

I do feel there is too much emphasis on disease and death and far too little on prevention and life.

I think if anything is to be done in Korea, it must be on an education basis. It must be a long term process. It must be in terms of educating people that health can be obtained if they only turn to the preventive side and also if they will work for it themselves.

I do think the Koreans are worthy of help. I think they have in the days of war upheld the flag of Freedom. They represent not the 38th Parallel, they represent people determined to resist Communist aggression.

You hear so little of Korea today. You only hear of Korea or any country such as Korea when a war is on. There are some definite problems to get out of the rut of the economy. There is education for the people. At the present time there are something like 480 medical students studying overseas. Some are over for one year, some two or three. They can't get them back. The idea is to send the people over so that they will come back and teach their own people. The thing is to get them back.

They will say, "It is all right for you. You get a good salary. You don't pay any taxes. We come back . . . after seeing the luscious America or Australia and you expect us to work for less than $10.00 a month."

That is all they get paid. How do you reconcile this? Well, I tell them that lots of the missionaries work for less.

But they have got some education and they don't want to work at the medical profession.... So it is a problem that will have to be settled by the Koreans themselves. Also, I would like to emphasize, that Korea has the second largest standing army in the world, in a very small country, with a population of 21 million, jammed between China and Japan and Russia on the north, and China on one side and Japan on the other. They are rightly concerned about the future. Consider any country, with no natural resources, that has to spend something like ninety per cent of its budget for the upkeep of the army. There is very little left for other work. I think they spend less than a tenth of one per cent on public health in Korea.

We have been trying through the World Health Organization and the United Nations to establish the Public Health Program in Korea on a basis which the Koreans themselves can sustain. That is very difficult.

To go back to the leprosy program. They claim they give so many million hwan to the problem of leprosy. When you break it down they give nothing.

You ask me again, what in my opinion should be done with Korea. I feel there should be a very long program of education of the Koreans. I think there should be a very long program of health education. Also, the Koreans can do a great deal more than they are doing. If they are dependent entirely upon American aid, upon American contributions, this of course will not establish a firm economy in Korea.

It is very difficult. I am reminded of the story of the old Irishman. . . . This old Irishman had been stealing chickens, but he went to his Father Confessor and he promised he wouldn't steal any more chickens.

A watch was put on the chicken house when the chickens were still disappearing, and eventually Pat came out with a bundle under his arm, all wrapped in newspapers, but with the heads and legs sticking out all over.

When the Priest came to him he said, "Pat, you disappoint me. You promised you wouldn't steal any more chickens."

Pat looked at the Father and he said, "Begorra, Father, don't you know you shouldn't believe all you see in the newspapers?"

I think the story goes for Korea: You shouldn't believe all you see in the newspapers.

I would like to mention one other thing about refugees. We left Korea in June and we went back to Hong Kong. They had something like a million Chinese refugees in' Hong Kong from Communist aggression. The United Nations has not seen the possibility of helping these people. It is a pathetic sight. I was very much touched because I think the condition is much worse than with the refugees in Korea. When I left many of the refugees in Korea were being rehabilitated.

Now in Korea there are a number of churches and as some of you know, I was a missionary for a while. In Korea there is a great deal of variety among these churches in the matter of building churches. In one town they built seven new churches. I was very much annoyed. They had taken some of the money to build a wall around the church, and I wanted it to build a shelter for the refugees who were in a very bad way.

I got talking to one of the Ministers--he happened to be a Baptist, but he could have been any of them ... a Roman Catholic or a Presbyterian or any of the others. I was asking how could the church people see such miserable conditions and such hovels, and still keep building churches when a great need existed for houses.

He said, "You don't understand the situation. We are here to get converts. They won't come unless we build these churches."

He really meant it. It shows you how misdirected people can be. He was quite frank and he said, "If I build a small church, nobody will come. If I build a large one, I will get the people to come." It is very difficult to direct the money where it should go.

There is UNRA, the United Nations Rehabilitation Aid program. Some of our doctors are with UNRA. There is also a United Nations Organization in Palestine, Jordan and Syria, with headquarters in Beirut and they were very anxious that I see the situation there because they are also being cut off this year. I don't think I have ever in my life seen such miserable conditions as the so-called Arab refugees are living in. We drove from Jericho to Damascus, and went around visiting the refugees. My friend in Jerusalem, who was an Australian doctor, told me that it was impossible under the Charter for these refugees to work. They are still living in, not tents, but just tarpaulins. They seldom change their clothes. Many of them have not changed for three or four years.

In my own feeling perhaps I am a little on the Israeli side, because they have made so much progress and there has been so much done. These refugees feel that time is on their side. My friend in Jerusalem said, "No, time is not on their side, it is on the Israeli side."

I spoke to many of the refugees. One of them told me he was born in Monterey. I said, "Why don't you go back?"

He said, "I am not going back until I get paid for the land that was confiscated." He was not going back until Churchill, Ben-Gurion and Truman paid him the $5,000 for the land they had confiscated when he left the Israeli side. It is pathetic. Many of them feel that way, too, but the conditions under which they live and the lack of progress under the aid is appalling.

I also visited the Wailing Wall of Jerusalem and it is quite pathetic to listen to them.

I am not going to quote what they said which wasn't very complimentary to either Mr. Truman or Mr. Churchill.

It is very difficult to assess values and determine what should be done in rehabilitation and aid to refugees. I don't want to discourage you. I am sure many of you have given very liberally to many organizations. I want to emphasize very strongly that if any aid is to be given, or to continue to be given it should be given through the United Nations effort. It should be given not as a publicity stunt, or as a great power wanting to gain a name for itself, but it should be given in the name of charity, diplomacy and common sense.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Mr. Bruce Legge, First Vice-President of the Club.