Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504100077
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ESTHER DISKIN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long
Contaminated water, food shortages and filthy living conditions were part of the daily struggle in Khabarovsk, a city of about 600,000 near Siberia.
Foreigners - missionaries in particular - often were targets of attacks, Yi wrote. Three times, he and his wife, Kei Wol, had their shopping bags slashed in the street and their groceries stolen. Robbers broke into another missionary's apartment and stole her computer, television set, radio and telephone.
The couple moved to a more secure apartment. But danger tracked them down: Last week, they were found dead in the locked apartment. Yi, 60, had been beaten to death. His wife, 59, had been strangled.
The brutality of their deaths has stunned medical colleagues and bewildered the Tidewater Korean Baptist Church of Virginia Beach, which for two decades was the center of the couple's spiritual and social life.
Church members were counting the days until the couple's return in September to celebrate the church's anniversary. Now, there are only questions.
``What is the motive of this tragedy?'' asked Michael M. Oh, president of the Tidewater Korean Community. ``We want to know what happened to them.''
Robbery, the most obvious reason for the killings, appears unlikely: Their money and passports were not touched, according to Kei Wol's sister, Kai Rim Park, who is in daily contact with U.S. and Russian officials.
Russian police are starting an investigation. Officials from Cooperative Services International, the Richmond-based Southern Baptist aid organization that sponsored the Yis, are sending their representatives to Khabarovsk.
At the church, friends are planning the funeral and collecting money for a memorial fund. Sometimes, when the grief is too great, they stop to gaze at snapshots sent by the couple during their 11/2 years in Russia.
``That [was] the last picture we had,'' said Sook Ja Paik. ``Just the two of them, standing in the snow.''
The couple's journey as missionaries was a dream that combined their two loves: medical work and Christian teaching.
Yi, a general practitioner and cardiologist, trained at a top medical college in Seoul, South Korea, and completed his residency in the United States. He moved to Virginia Beach in the early 1970s and built a thriving practice.
Caring for others also was part of life for Kei Wol. Her father was a pioneer in rural medicine in Korea. She trained as a nurse.
``Our parents were always consumed with helping others,'' said Park, Kei Wol's sister. ``Sometimes, we resented it. But when we grew up, we saw the wonderful things that they had done. We saw the worthiness of it.''
Yi was distinguished by his meticulous standards and love for those who came into his care, many of them elderly.
His appointments dragged on because he spent time talking with each patient and writing long notes in their records, said W. Andrew Dickinson Jr., who was chief of cardiology at Virginia Beach General Hospital when Yi worked there.
Dickinson would tease him. ``I'd say, `Gosh, Chu Hon, you've got to get faster. Your day's never going to end,''' he recalled.
For the childless Yis, ``the church was their family,'' Paik said. Their love and energy as founding members helped it grow from about 50 people to about 300.
Five years ago, when the congregation moved to Kempsville, the Yis were hands-on helpers. Kei Wol, a petite woman, spent days painting the walls. Yi regularly came to water the saplings planted on the church's grounds, sometimes completing his work in the dark.
Yi's passion for the Bible made him a remarkable teacher, said Cecilia Choi, a close friend and member of the congregation. His enthusiasm sparked the weekly Bible study classes and motivated his desire to spread the Christian faith abroad.
Yi sent donations to the son of a local doctor who did missionary work, and he began to consider such work for himself.
A brief trip to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, near the Caspian Sea, boosted his interest. He learned about a large Korean community in the far eastern part of Russia, where many had lost touch with their roots. Although Khabarovsk is only about 500 miles north of North Korea, the residents' children couldn't speak Korean, and he wondered if they also had lost touch with their religion.
His wife shared his vision. ``We were discussing the life of our past and present one night, and what the future would hold,'' Yi said in a 1993 interview. ``We were born in a country where people live poorly, and we realized the way we were living was not what God wanted for us.''
They left in June 1993, after giving their church a $10,000 donation. They went to spread religion, but Yi's medical training was his passport into Russian society.
``He gave up everything for this commitment,'' Dickinson said. ``It was a great professional sacrifice, a great personal sacrifice, a great material sacrifice. It was just the highest calling.''
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB