The late former doctor and missionary Helen Pearl Mackenzie received a posthumous honor from the Korean government for her contribution to helping Korean women and children during the Korean War and training obstetricians and gynecologists.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare gave the honorary award to Mackenzie and 211 others in celebration of Health Day on Friday at COEX in Seoul.

“There are many good-hearted people like Ms. Mae Hye-ran who had worked so hard to help people in need. We will find more good people and spread their unknown stories,” said a ministry official. 

Mae Hye-ran is Mackenzie’s Korean name.

Mackenzie, a daughter of a Presbyterian missionary, was born in Busan in 1913.

She went to a foreign high school in Pyongyang and received her medical degree in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Melbourne in 1938.

She later returned to Korea in 1952 when she was 38 during the Korean War and established Il Sin Women’s Hospital (now called Il Sin Christian Hospital) in Busan where she took care of women and babies suffering from the aftereffects of the war, and trained about 400 doctors in obstetrics and gynecology and 2,599 nurses in midwifery.

Mackenzie also paid extra attention to underprivileged mothers and babies and visited their homes every week.

Mackenzie has a record of 58,000 deliveries, 27,000 surgeries, 1,422,000 out-patient services and 99,000 in-patient services during her 24 years of work at the hospital.

She created the Mackenzie Foundation in 1974 from which interest of donations she collected from Australia went to the hospital. So far, about 128 million won ($113,000) has been collected for the foundation.

Mackenzie died in 2009 when she was 96. She has two sisters living in Australia.

At the award ceremony, In Myung-jin, chairman of Il Sin Christian Hospital received the award on behalf of the Mackenzie family.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldcorp.com)