THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 31, 1995 TAG: 9503310534
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN AND MARIE JOYCE, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
Chu Hon Yi tried to be upbeat when he wrote letters about missionary life in the remote Far East of Russia. But there were so many problems.
Contaminated water, food shortages, filthy living conditions were part of the daily strugglein Khabarovsk, a mainly Slavic city of about 600,000 near Siberia.
But foreigners and missionaries, in particular were often targets of attacks, Yi wrote. Three times, shopping bags carried by Yi and his wife, Kei Wol, were slashed in the street and their groceries stolen. Robbers broke into another missionary's apartment, stealing her computer, television, radio and the telephone.
The couple moved to a more secure apartment. But danger tracked them down: On Tuesday night, they were found dead in the locked apartment. Yi, 60, was beaten to death. His wife, 59, was strangled.
The brutality of their deaths has stunned medical colleagues and bewildered the Tidewater Korean Baptist Church of Virginia Beach, which, for two decades, was the center of the couple's spiritual and social life.
Church members said they were counting the days until the couple returned in September to celebrate the church's anniversary. Now, the counting has turned to frightened questioning. ``What is the motive of this tragedy?'' said Michael M. Oh, president of the Tidewater Korean Community. ``We want to know what happened to them.''
Robbery, the most obvious reason for the killings, appears unlikely: Their money and passports were not touched, according to Kei Wol's sister, Kai Rim Park, who is in daily contact with U.S. and Russian officials.
Russian police are starting an investigation. Officials from Cooperative Services International, the Richmond-based Southern Baptist aid organization that sponsored the Yis, are sending their representatives to Khabarovsk.
At the church, friends are planning for the funeral and collecting money for a memorial fund. Sometimes, when the grief grows too great, they stop to gaze at snapshots sent by the couple during their year and a half in Russia.
``That (was) the last picture we had,'' said Sook Ja Paik. ``Just the two of them, standing in the snow.''
The couple's journey as missionaries was a dream that combined their two loves, medical work and Christian teaching.
Dr. Yi, a general practitioner and cardiologist, trained at a top medical college in Seoul, South Korea, and completed his residency in the United States. He moved to Virginia Beach in the early 1970s and built a thriving practice.
Caring for others was also part of life for Kei Wol. Her father was a pioneer in rural medicine in Korea. She trained as a nurse.
``Our parents were always consumed with helping others,'' said Park, Kei Wol's sister. ``Sometimes, we resented it. But when we grew up, we saw the wonderful things that they had done. We saw the worthiness of it.''
Yi was distinguished by his meticulous standards and love for those who came into his care, many of them elderly.
His appointments dragged on because he spent time talking to each patient and wrote long notes in their records, said Dr. W. Andrew Dickinson Jr., who was chief of cardiology at Virginia Beach General Hospital when Yi worked there.
Dickinson would tease him. ``I'd say, `Gosh, Chu Hon, you've got to get faster. Your day's never going to end,' '' Dickinson recalled.
For the couple, who did not have children, ``the church was their family,'' said Paik. Their love and energy as founding members helped it grow from about 50 people to about 300.
Five years ago, when the congregation moved to a new location in Kempsville, the Yis were hands-on helpers. Kei Wol, a petite woman, spent days painting the walls. Dr. Yi regularly came to water the saplings planted on the church's grounds, sometimes completing his work in the dark.
Yi's passion for the Bible made him a remarkable teacher, said Cecilia Choi, a close friend and member of the congregation. His enthusiasm sparked the weekly Bible study classes, and motivated his desire to spread the Christian faith abroad.
Yi sent donations to the son of a local doctor who did missionary work, and began to consider such work for himself.
A brief trip to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan boosted his interest. He learned about a large Korean community in the far eastern part of the country, where many had lost touch with their roots. Their children couldn't speak Korean, and he wondered if they had also lost touch with their religion.
His wife shared his vision. ``We were discussing the life of our past and present one night, and what the future would hold,'' Dr. Yi said in a 1993 interview. ``We were born in a country where people live poorly and we realized the way we were living was not what God wanted for us.''
They left in June 1993, after giving their beloved church a $10,000 donation. They went to spread the gospel, but Yi's medical training was his passport into Russian society.
``He gave up everything for this commitment,'' Dickinson said. ``It was a great professional sacrifice, a great personal sacrifice, a great material sacrifice. It was just the highest calling.''
Their letters shocked friends at home, even as they tried to keep the tone cheerful.
Routine medical care at the hospitals in Khabarovsk was a nightmare: Flies in the operating room, the same needle used more than once, two filthy toilets for a hospital with 300 beds, drugs that didn't even appear on the shelves until long past their expiration date and no electricity.
The Virginia Beach Medical Society collected $3,000 for him, along with boxes of equipment, medical supplies and drugs. When the boxes arrived, he wrote, his Russian colleagues stared at the individual packets of sterile gauze. They had never seen any.
The couple wore layers of clothes in unheated rooms during a six-month winter when the temperature dropped to at least 20 degrees below zero. During the summer, they suffered in 100-degree heat without air conditioning, while the stench from garbage in the street wafted through the windows.
They had no car. They often walked for 30 minutes to the grocery store, rather than board the overcrowded buses where passengers screamed and shoved each other. Faucets, when they worked, spit out water that was tea-colored, contaminated with dirt and rust.
The joy of spreading God's word kept them going.
He organized a Bible study among students and doctors at the hospital. They held a Christmas party, fed their guests American-style sandwiches and their first taste of Jell-O, taught them carols and handed out Bibles.
The couple loved the people they met, and mourned poverty and suffering that they felt had been caused by a long history of czarist and communist tyranny.
Russia, Dr. Yi wrote, is like the man from the Bible story of the Good Samaritan, the man who fell among thieves and was beaten, robbed and left for dead.
``Now, I think it is the time for us to be THE neighbor, as `A good Samaritan,' '' Dr. Yi wrote. ``The people here are the victims of wrong leaders, and they surely need compassionate help.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Chu Hon Yi and Kei Wol, visiting Moscow. Tuesday, they were found
killed in their apartment in east Russia.
Photo
Chu Hon Yi and Kei Wol, in Khabarovsk, received supplies from the
Virginia Beach Medical Society. Yi wrote home, saying his Russian
colleagues stared in awe at the individual packets of sterile
gauze.
KEYWORDS: MURDER MISSIONARY by CNB