Puchon to build Pearl Buck memorial

Puchon City Hall plans to set up a memorial hall for the late Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), a Nobel Literature laureate and a world-renowned social worker, in the city by the first half of 2003.

A spokesman for the city government in the western outskirts of Seoul said Tuesday that the Pearl Buck Memorial Hall would be built on a lot of 1,650 pyong (one pyong equals 3.3 square meters) in Sosa-gu, where the Pearl Buck Foundation was founded and the late Dr. Yu Il-Han set up YuHan Corp., a pharmaceutical company.

The city government will embark on buying the lot and building the memorial hall with a space floor of 180 pyong, an outdoor exhibition site of 790 pyong, and a performing site and parking lot of 680 pyong by the first half of 2003, he said.

The city government also will inaugurate a committee to promote the project to build the Pearl Buck Memorial Hall by March and will raise the necessary funds and historical materials. The committee will be made of city councilors, historians, literary men and members of the Pearl Buck Foundation.

The late Dr. Yu set up a pharmaceutical experimental institute on a lot of 20,000 pyong in Sosa-gu in 1936 and operated the firm until June 1967, when he donated the whole lot of the company factory to Buck to use as the facilities for war orphans and children of mixed blood.

She set up the Pearl Buck Foundation on the donated land in 1967 and had operated Sosa Hope Orphanage for war orphans and children of mixed race under the name of the foundation until 1973. However, the orphanage closed after she died in 1973, and the land was turned over to a third person. There are three buildings on the land at present being used as factories. Among those from the Sosa Hope Orphanage are famous singers such as Insuni, Yoon Soo-Il and Park Il-Joon.

Park Joung-Gu jangkung@donga.com