VOICE OF SPRING.

To the friends who love Korea.

Dear Friends,

Albert Camus’ ‘The Plague’ is the novel to portray the combat against the plague at Oran in 1939. It covers progress of contagious disease, victims in suffering and heroic people at fight against the epidemic. Camus spared great number of pages for Christianity, God’s divine power and Chirstian faith. But I do not touch the Christianity here, as it is beyond my comprehension.

The plague appears when hundreds of bleeding rats emerge on the road in day light and die. Then the plague swiftly spread to human being and rats suddenly disappear. The city is blocked and a number of heroic volunteers tirelessly strive to stop the spread of the plague, in the lack of medicine and preventives. Dr. Rieux leads the team of doctors and administrators for the desperate fight against the plague. The Jesuit priest father Raeloux, the man of conscientiousness Tarrou, journalist Rambert, a literary aspirant Grand, and finally Rieux’s aged mother join the effort in their own manner for ‘living and dying for what one loves’.

Even during the calamity, a group of evildoers appear to take advantage of the plague, planting painful scars in people's heart. But the dedication of the people with super humanly sainthood, eventually, gets rid of the plague from the City after a year since its outbreak. Ironically rats reappear, that indicates the plague can reemerge, as a turning a full circle of the wheel.

As predicted by Camus, the circle of the wheel has been turned many times in many places in the world after The Plague.

It is now with Korean on the Wuhan virus infection disseminated from China. It is spreading fast since the administration failed to stop the influx at the beginning. In a span of 47 days since its outbreak, the confirmed patient reached 7,300 with the death toll of 50, as of the end of the week. More than 100 countries in the world imposed restrictions against Korean nationals, whose daily lives are directly connected with the trade in international community. This year, we also find some evildoers here to gain profit out of the plague. Some profiteers earn the money in handling fatal face masks. The country, which meets the global requirement most advanced and complicated electronic goods, is unable to supply simple item like face masks. Some politicians and administrators try to find a way of evasion of responsibilities, passing the bulk to others.

Daegu City is the area where more than 80% of the infected are confirmed and the number is steadily growing beyond the control, as it was spreading through some different style of massive services in the rally of different Christian sectors. Doctors and administers have voluntarily continued their combat against spread of the plague, with the far short hands to take care of outgrowing number of patients. In addition of shortage of hands, they face the great lack of sick beds and are unable to secure even face mask for patience and curers.

However, the situation comes stabilized, when citizen recovered their civic ethics overcoming the fear, especially in Daegu. Saints are marching in. Doctors of various fields, angels in white and administrators in the management voluntarily assembled successively in Daegu 'to live and die for whatever they love'. Their super-humanly efforts with the advanced health care system in Korea gradually start to heel the pain of the area and cool down the situation in extreme. Many people hope the plague turns its point of inflection soon.

We are listening the “Voice of Spring’ of Johan Strauss in the space tightly shut. It is real Spring Time, but the beautiful Korean Spring is yet to come. Everybody concentrate, holding its breath, its own desperate effort to regain Spring in time.

Dear Friends who love Korea,

Korea has been known a country to comprehend the Western style of life, becoming the bridge between East and West. Now, it is suffering from the disaster. We know this is not just a problem of Korea at this moment, but the matter of the entire world repeatedly emerging through the years to come.

Please pray for this beautiful country and brilliant people to overcome their trouble as soon as possible.

God bless you all.

Sunghyuk Hwang.