Last week, a number of South Korean newspapers published articles featuring the visit of Sister Marianne Stoger, an Austrian nun who spent more than 40 years caring for Korean patients with Hansen’s disease in the nation’s remote island of Sorokdo from the 1960s to the mid-2000s.

She had left Sorokdo and returned to Austria back in 2005 in secret, just leaving a hand-written letter to the staff and her patients. Featuring her first visit to the island in 10 years, many papers here described Stoger as an “angel,” for, among other things, “touching the patients with bare hands even when their body fluids sprayed on her face.” On top of the reports, Health Minister Chung Chin-youb also publicly expressed gratitude for her work on behalf of the Korean government, in a meeting with Stoger on the island last week.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Sorokdo National Hospital, the national medical facility which was established as a leprosarium by the Japanese during colonial rule, but little is being written about the human rights abuse committed by medical staff at the institution.

While there is no question that Stoger and her devotion deserve respect and acknowledgment, the reportage were seen to omit one glaring fact, that she was there when patients on the island were being forced to undergo abortions and sterilizations until the 1990s.

While Health Minister Chung thanked Stoger in public, the event also brought back the issue of the South Korean government’s lack of apology to the Hansen’s disease patients who suffered abuse while staying at state-run medical facilities on the island.

As of last year, some 560 people with Hansen’s disease -- also known as leprosy -- won a total of five compensation suits against the government for forced abortions and sterilizations that took place decades ago. The cases are, however, still ongoing as the government has appealed to the nation’s Supreme Court, claiming some patients “may have chosen to undergo the procedures on their own.”

According to the ruling last year by the Seoul Central District Court, abortion and sterilization procedures were performed without patients’ consent in the 1960s. In 1945, 84 leprosy patients were slaughtered by hospital staff and security officers over a dispute on food and medicine, according to a 2006 report by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea.

Although South Korea abolished its anti-leprosy segregation policy in 1963, male patients were required until the 1990s to undergo vasectomies if they wanted to live with their spouses in the facility. All pregnant female patients were asked to leave the hospital. Those who wanted to stay had no option but to abort the child.

“As many (female and pregnant) patients had no social networks or financial means to live outside the facility, they were practically forced to undergo abortion,” the ruling said.

The ruling also pointed out that Hansen’s disease patients were systemically segregated until the 1970s, even after the anti-leprosy segregation policy was dropped in 1963.

Hansen’s disease, a long-term, disabling bacterial infection which can cause disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage, is neither highly contagious nor fatal. According to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S., the disease can be easily treated, especially with early diagnosis.

Back in 1954, South Korea in fact included the disease under “Group 3 Infectious Diseases” in its Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act, classifying it under a group of diseases that may “prevail intermittently” and does not have a high risk of mass breakout. Other diseases included in the same group include influenza and malaria. The government has known since the 1950s that the patients did not need to be isolated the way they had been.

Knowing this, it is disturbing to read news reports that describe Stoger, who was also a certified nurse, as an “angel” for touching the patients with her bare hands. As proven by the WHO and the CDC, the disease is not highly contagious and therefore it is not out of the ordinary for a health care professional to touch patients with the particular disease. If the government had offered education and accurate information about the disease, more health care workers at the facility would have done the same.

Such reports that praise Stoger as an angel perpetuate discrimination and prejudice against the patients, as they are based on the notion that their body fluids are dangerous. All patients have the right to be treated, regardless of the disease they have. The Korean government must acknowledge the patients’ rights, and apologize to those who suffered. This should have come before the minister’s expression of gratitude to Stoger and her work.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)