“A Spirit of Sacrifice ”

There is a touching story of a missionary, who have taken care of the passengers and minimized victims of the boat capsizing accident that killed 3 Koreans and injured 2 more on the 6th in the Philippines.

The hero of the story is a missionary belonged to KCCC, Oh, Yoon-Taek (39) who was responsible for leading the group. He lost his wife, Chon, Sang-Hwa (34), who was also a missionary belonged to KCCC, and her daughter Eun-Soo (6) during the accident.

A tourist, Yoo, Min-Sik (35), who was rescued from the accident explained, “The reason why 19 out 24 people were alive during the hostile situation was because missionary Oh, Yoon-Taek took care of the accident spot so well for more than 30 minutes until the rescue boat arrived.”

According to Mr. Yoo, the boat lurched because of sudden strong waves, and then capsized. After the boat was capsized, some passengers got out of the boat and the others were trapped inside the boat. The boat was out of balance and sinking because of rough seas.

Mr. Yoo said, “there was a Filipino captain but he couldn’t control the situation because he didn’t speak Korean,” and “it was safe for missionary Oh to stay at the side of the boat, but he went up to the body of the boat at the risk of his life and brought people up and calmed them down.”

He continued, “He did CPR for the fainted people,” and “even at the hospital, he ran around all over the hospital bare foot taking care of other people instead of his own family.”

There were 4 of his family including himself and his son Jin-Woo (8) at the boat; however, he couldn’t save his wife and daughter because he was busy taking care of other people.

The boat was going from the Puertogallera port in Mindor island to Batngas port carrying 24 Koreans including 22 missionaries and college students, who stayed in the Philippines to study language since the beginning of February, belonged to KCCC and 2 tourists who joined them later.

Missionary Oh started preaching in 1991, served as a manager of KCCC Kunsan Division, started missionary work in the Philippines in 1999, and worked as the head of the Language Mission Academy since then.

KCCC shared a phone conversation with Mr. Yoo in public through its homepage at www.kccc.org

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