Kim Ui-Sook, Professor Emeritus at College of Nursing, Builds Graduate School of Nursing in Bangladesh Inside a small thatched cottage, people, cattle and household goods are all tangled in a mess. There is a piece of cloth on the floor where a mother is due to give birth. The midwife hands over a vinyl bag. Due to the risk of AIDS infection, the baby is delivered with hands covered with the vinyl bag. The bag will be rinsed in water and be used again. Doctor Kim Ui-Sook, Professor Emeritus at College of Nursing at Yonsei University, recalls her heartache when she visited Ethiopia to help with a government aid project last January. She was reminded of the situation in South Korea after the 6.25 Korean War. Doctor Kim was born in Hwanghae Province and at the age of three, she said, “I had become a refugee and experienced extreme poverty first-hand.” In 1964, she entered Yonsei University’s College of Nursing and further studied family planning programs in Seoul, Gyeonggi, Chungcheong and Gangwon areas. In the mid 60s, nine out of 10 babies were delivered at home, not at a hospital. There were many cases where the mother died while in labor, and sometimes babies got infected with tetanus during the process of cutting the umbilical cord and died. She says, “More than half could not go to the hospital. I decided to research on family planning and local medical services instead of becoming a nurse. I thought that it is better to prevent people from getting sick before having to treat them as patients.” At the time, graduate nursing programs were not available in Korea and she had to study abroad, but she did not have the means to. Then, in 1972, she was provided financial support by The Rockefeller Foundation. “I was lucky,” she says. “It was a program for Chinese students, but with the communization of China, the aid was redirected to Korean students. Everyone thought that I will never return to Korea. Employment opportunities for nurses in America are plenty, so they thought I would never come back.” Four years ago, she started getting involved in overseas aid programs including ones in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. Last month, she took a week-long trip to Bangladesh for the establishment of Bangladesh’s first graduate school of nursing pursued by KOICA. Doctor Kim obtained her master’s and doctoral degrees at Boston University, USA. Contrary to everyone’s expectations, she returned to Korea in 1980. She has taught university students and conducted welfare and medical service programs since then. “Bangladesh today is reminiscent of our country in the 1960s and 70s. There are few nurses and more than half the population are not able to get medical benefit. The establishment of a graduate school of nursing will provide the foundation for development in Bangladesh since it will help Bangladesh foster welfare and medical experts within the country.”