By Thomas Maresca
Nurses Margaritha Pissarek (L) and Marianne Stoeger (R) treat a patient with Hansen's disease on Sorok Island.
The sound of music (click here) rings out from a modest home on this tiny island, not much bigger than New York's Central Park, off the southwestern coast of South Korea.
The setting is an idyllic one, with pine trees, beaches and clear water glinting under a crisp blue late-autumn sky. But for 73-year-old Chung Bong-up, coming to Sorok Island in 1975 was a fate that seemed worse than death.
The island, called Sorokdo in Korean, was at that time a colony for sufferers of Hansen's disease (leprosy), a dehumanizing prison where patients were exiled by a society that still deeply stigmatized the illness.
"I felt like I lost everything in my life," Chung said of being sent here. "It felt like the sky was falling down."...
...Stories abound on Sorokdo of the kindness of the blue-eyed nurses who kept their clinic door open at all times and held birthday parties for their patients, all while working tirelessly to remove the shame and fear surrounding Hansen's disease.
Stoeger, now 85, and Pissarek, 84, returned to Austria in 2005. They have received several awards from the South Korean government and were made honorary South Korean citizens in 2016.
Now a movement aims to give them the highest accolade of all: a Nobel Peace Prize....
