Vol. 10, Issue 02 February 2010 
THE KOREAN WAY NO. 84
The Korean Way
In December 1963 the first group of 500 miners was flown to Germany from Gimpo Airport.
By 2Ys
Korean miners and nurses in Germany
Korea was in a political and social turmoil in the early 1960s. The government party under President Syngman Rhee rigged the March 15th 1960 presidential election which led to students uprising. Students demanded reelection. Not a day passed without student demonstrations in March and April, 1960 and these demonstrations culminated in the April 19 Student Revolution, resulting in the collapse of the Syngman Rhee government. The ensuing year after the student revolution witnessed a chaotic social situation. The student forces, after bringing down the lawful government, the first time ever in world history, even envisioned that they could replace the established older generation and they even planned to go to Panmunjeon to negotiate unification with North Korean delegates. One year after this kind of social turmoil, a group of young army officers under Major General Park Chung-hee staged a coup d’état on May 16, 1961, bringing a stop to unruly demonstrations.
Korea was devastated during the Korean War 1950-53 and relied on foreign aid for survival and there was no country in the world that would offer financial loans to Korea in the early 1960s. When General Park Chung-hee became president in 1962 and visited U.S.A. and asked for a commercial loan, his plea was cordially turned down.
At around this time Germany needed many foreign mining workers for its coal mines and many nurses for its hospitals and an arrangement was concluded for Korea to send those workers to Germany. At this time job seekers were abundant in Korea and when the mining jobs were announced the applicants’ ratio was 100 to 1. In December 1963 the first group of 500 miners was flown to Germany from Gimpo Airport. Most of them were either college graduates or college dropout students, which indicated the job-scarce society. By getting a mining job in a faraway country, they wanted to help out their family. The lobby of Gimpo airport turned into a place of tears of parting families. The number of miners sent to Germany until 1977 was 7,932 and they sent 70-90% of their earnings to their family in Korea, which amounted to 50 millon dollars a year, equivalent to 2% of Korean GNP. It was quite a help for the Korean economic recovery.
A similar tearful story goes for the Korean nurses. The first group of nurses arrived in Berlin in 1966 were 1,126 and the total number of nurses sent to Germany until 1976 was 10,226. The work of Korean nurses was quite laudable and one senior nurse was reported as saying that Korean nurses were referred to as “Korean angels” by German media; Korean nurses’ initial work was to cleanse stiffened dead bodies.
The miners and nurses were to stay in Germany for three years and a certain portion of their earnings had to be sent home to Korea. Their money thus sent to Korea was certainly a seed money for the Korean economic growth in the 1970s.
There is an episode surrounding President Park’s visit to Germany at around this time. Visiting Germany at the invitation of the German government, President Park made an arrangement to meet the Korean workers to give them words of encouragement. When the time came to sing the national anthem, however, strangely nobody tried to sing, and instead sobbing and crying were heard. The audience were moved on the spur of the moment. Witnessing this scene, President Park himself wept with the audience in sympathy and could not finish his prepared speech.
