2915 KOR Chuseok Harvest Festival
austraLasia #2915
Annual harvest festival
(Chuseok),
Korea: "The Greatest Love of All"
SEOUL: 12 September 2011 -- The Fr John Lee sdb
phenomenon rolls on.... KBS CoolFM (89.1 Mhz Seoul), is
featuring the life of Fr Lee Tae-seok, a Salesian who
devoted his life to helping people in southern Sudan, for
its special English program for children Sept. 12-13.
Prepared exclusively for the
Chuseok holidays, the show, titled “The Greatest Love of
All,” has a Korean introduction by actor Sohn Hyun-joo and
child actor Yang Han-yeol. In the show Sohn plays the Yang's
father, who tells his son about John Lee’s life.
The priest's story is then told in
English by Lee Geun-cheol and John Valentine, the hosts of
KBS CoolFM’s long-time English-language show, Good
Morning Pops which has been aired for some 20 years
now.
Kim Kang-hoon, the show's producer,
said the program aims to provide an opportunity for its
young listeners to learn English while they are introduced
to famous Korean figures. “Most kids in Korea read English
biographies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy as they
try to learn the language,” he said. “We thought it would be
nice to learn about Korean figures in English.”
The show will be publishing a
children’s book series in English, along with audio CDs,
featuring Korea’s well-known figures and their legacies. A
book about Lee will be released later this month. It will be
followed by another on Park Ji-sung, who plays soccer for
Manchester United.
The kinds of details covered by the radio
broadcast include the following:
Lee was born in Busan in 1962, and
studied medicine at Inje University in Gimhae, South
Gyeongsang Province. In 2001, he was ordained as a Catholic
priest and began serving in the small town of Tonj, in
southern Sudan. There, he worked as a doctor, teacher and
priest. (Not sure if the contents include reference to the
fact that he was a Salesian; it certainly does not appear in
an earlier report on the show).
To heal the inner wounds of
children suffering through a protracted civil war, Lee also
ran a brass band made up of the town’s young people.
Lee was diagnosed with terminal
colorectal cancer during his visit to Seoul in 2008 and
passed away on Jan. 14, 2010. His last words, in English
were, “Don’t worry. Everything is good.”
“Don’t Cry for Me, Sudan,” a
documentary film highlighting Lee’s life in Sudan, was
screened in local movie theatres last year. He was
posthumously awarded Korea’s highest order of civil merit in
June for his legacy in the African country.
“The Greatest Love of All” is being aired from 6:30 a.m. to
7 a.m. on Sept. 12-13.
