"They were surprised that I was still alive," laughed Oak Soon Hong, Roosevelt Island's 82-year-old Senior, when asked about her recent three-day visit to Korea, her native country, to be honored at the 50th-anniversary celebration of the Korean National Nurses Association.  On April 27, she was discovered, invited, and, four days later, she was flying to Seoul, where she was acclaimed and honored as the first Chief of the Korean government Ministry of Health's Bureau of Nursing Affairs, as well as the organizer and first president of the Korean Nurses Association.

It was only in 1948 that Korea had become independent.  Before 1945, the country had been under strict Japanese control.  "Those were difficult times," Hong recalled.  "We were punished if we didn't speak Japanese even at home and we were all given Japanese names.  Mine was changed to Yo-shi-ko Songko.  But despite the repression, they couldn't stifle Korean longing for freedom."

In 1949, as the 31-year-old Chief, she led the Korean National Nurses Association in becoming a member of the International Council of Nurses (ICN).  "We had lots of help from the American Military Government in Korea," Hong conceded, "especially from Mildred Lucka, who was our American Advisor.  There was so much hardship after the war, but she was the one who helped me bring our professional nurses up to higher nursing standards.  It was really such a proud moment when, at the 1949 ICN Congress in Stockholm, the Korean flag, carried by our nurses, was for the first time presented to an international organization."

It was the 50th anniversary of that event that was celebrated on May 3, 1999, in Seoul, South Korea.  "It was so very exciting for me, I got quite emotional at times," confessed Hong.  "But I was surprised that I was the only person at the flower-bedecked headtable who was dressed in a traditional Korean outfit.  All of the distinguished ministers and guests, including the current ICN President from Denmark, were in Western clothes.  I don't think there are many people in South Korea today who remember much about their cultural heritage.  They all seem to be reaching for the Western way of doing things."

When asked whether she gave a speech, her eyes twinkled and she said: "I felt like I came from another planet, everyone in the audience was so very young.  I told them how I had watched the Korean Nurses Association grow and then become a member of the ICN fifty years ago.  Then I suggested to the audience that for the next 50 years the Korean Nurses Association's growth and development were going to be their responsibility."