from www.koreaherald.com:
A woman runs nine full marathon courses in just two months, a man scales all the high peaks in the Himalayas and on seven continents and travels to the two poles, a man climbs Mt. Everest risking his life to recover the body of a colleague. Believe it or not, but that's what Koreans have done this year.
What drives these great challenges?
It is scarcely believable that Lee Kyung-hee, a 35-year-old nurse's assistant who looks like a girl, completed nine marathons in just two months in Rome, Paris, Kuala Lumpur and Zurich.
Considering that marathoners on average participate in a race every two or three months, it is hard to accept that Lee, 171 centimeters tall and weighing 50 kilograms, effectively ran a 42.195 kilometer marathon every week.
Asked about her marathon philosophy, Lee said, "When running a race, I find my real self. I just run, every time I need of something to focus on."
Members of a Korean expedition perform a lama ceremony, praying for safe mountaineering at their base camp on Everest. [Courtesy of JoongAng Ilbo]
Lee said that when she broke up with her former boyfriend, she needed someone or something to love. "The dark memory did not mean just a moment of failure to me. Rather, I used to feel a sense of despair throughout my whole life. It has been five years since I resolved to run a race in order to get out of the reality," she said.
Actually, her first venture into marathoning in August 2000 proved too much of a challenge. After running just 2.8 kilometers along a parkway in Daegu, she could not even get up all the next day.
But she persevered. After running in domestic races for a while, she finally made her overseas debut at the New York City Marathon in 2003, which opened her eyes toward other marathon prospects elsewhere and led her to visit a variety of countries.
On March 6, the strongly motivated Lee started her two-month marathon adventure in Kuala Lumpur. After taking a leave of absence from her job, she headed to races in European cities - Rome, Barcelona, Prague, Zurich, Paris, Essen, London and Belfast - from March 13 through May 2.
Although she has not yet won or finished highly placed in a marathon, she has come away from her races with more understanding of what makes people run. "It was (at first) hard to understand why middle-aged men without marathon training participate in marathon races there. But I afterwards was deeply impressed by the scenes of their family members who cheered their fathers and husbands and felt so proud of them."
Asked about her future plans, Lee said, "I would like to let many other foreigners know about my country by putting some signs representing Korea on my running clothes.
"I have another plan to move on to the Sahara marathon in 2007, an ultra race which takes more than 270 kilometers, which is also known as 'the Hell of Marathons.'"
Mountaineer Park Young-suk is also driven to achieve the impossible. He led an expedition to the North Pole on May 1, making him the first person in the world to complete the "grand slam" of mountaineering.
He had already climbed 14 peaks in the Himalayas, as well as the highest peaks in the seven continents and visited the South Pole.
"I feel that this accomplishment is a sort of victory over something that used to seem impossible," said the veteran mountaineer. "I hope this achievement will give more strength to Koreans."
His expedition was close to giving up after struggling against freezing sea, blizzards, frostbite and other problems for 54 days. "Having frostbite all over the nose, face and thigh, we were all worn out and were about to give up," recalled Park.
But this expedition was the second time Park had challenged the Arctic and he resolved not to make the same mistake as in 2003 when he gave up at the halfway mark. This time he had prepared better, having himself designed clothes and shoes and preparing tasty Korean food for every expedition member.
Ji Kyung-ho, general manager of the alpine group of Keimyung University, reminisced how the Korean Chomolangma (Everest) Human Expedition successfully located and buried the body of Park Moo-taek, who had been missing for about one year on the world's highest mountain.
The expedition was organized to search for three missing and presumed dead mountaineers from the 2004 Keimyung University Everest Expedition in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the university's founding.
In 2004, Park Moo-taek and Chang Min did not return after climbing up the top of Chomolangma, Tibetan for Everest.
Park, the expedition leader of the six-member team, tried to signal from the top of Everest in whipping snow. But, exhausted, he fell off the summit into a snowy rocky wall and Chang also slid away.
Later in the evening, Paek Joon-ho set out with two Tibetan sherpas to look for his two colleagues and he, too, went missing.
Paek's widow said, "The rescue expedition members have realized my husband's goal (looking for Park before going missing himself), and I really feel thankful to all the members."
Asked why it took a year to put together the rescue mission, manager Ji said, "As a matter of fact, a three-member team, including expedition leader Son Chil-kyu and climbing leader Eum Hong-gil, carried out a preparation mission from October 1 to 12 during the fall season in Mt. Everest."
He added, "The team found it was impossible to undertake a recovery mission during the fall season, when the monsoon comes with heavy snow, let alone during the winter season." He said about 80 percent of mountaineers try to climb the challenging mountain during spring.
On May 27, 2004, two days before a scheduled funeral ceremony, climbing leader Eum Hong-gil, 45, insisted on the recovery mission on Everest, the first one throughout the history of mountaineering.
"We must recover the bodies because it is not right for us to leave them out there. I would like to join, as soon as a recovery team for the missing colleagues is formed."
Furthermore, roughly 100 people who gathered on May 29 to bid a last farewell strongly backed the idea of the recovery mission after families of the dead men objected to a funeral without the bodies of the missing men.
Ten experienced climbers, along with 10 broadcast journalists, producers and script writers, decided to devote themselves to preparing for the recovery mission, and an increasing number of corporations provided financial support for the effort.
Ten experienced mountaineers were trained as a team on tough climbing routes such as Mount Halla, Jeju Island, and they flew to Nepal on March 14 to begin the recovery operation.
The expedition team finally lifted Park's body away from the icy rock near the Second Step at an attitude of 8,750 meters at 1:20 p.m. on May 29, and buried the body under stones on the way to Camp 3 some two hours later.
Eum, who led the recovery mission, was forced by weather conditions to bury the dead mountaineer on Everest, abandoning the original plan to bring his remains to a temple in Tibet for a funeral.
"If we had not changed the original plan, we could have been in danger," recalled the veteran mountaineer. "Since he (Park) was a mountaineer, it was quite right to bury him on the mountain."
As a matter of fact, the recovery team had struggled against severe weather conditions for almost two months until the team identified the late Park. Bad weather kept the base camp team led by expedition leader Son Chil-kyu from moving the body.
"The frozen body weighed about 100 kilograms and we spent about three hours getting the body from the icy rock," a member of the team said. "Windy, snowy weather made our mission much harder. It took about more than two hours to move 100 meters."
The team is scheduled to return home on Monday when a joint ceremony will be held to honor the dead mountaineers. Two of the bodies are still lost on the mountain.
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