Seoul Train

Fifty years ago, the Medical School and Seoul National University launched a successful collaboration.

By Dan Emerson

Forty-five years after Neal Gault first visited Seoul, South Korea, the scenes are still vivid: oxen pulling wagons along dirt roads; a farmer carrying a saki-anesthetized pig to market, strapped on his bicycle; and, the war-ravaged Seoul National University Hospital, the gutted shell of a 500-bed facility.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of a collaborative partnership between the University of Minnesota and Seoul National University. In celebration, the two partners will hold a joint stem cell symposium on the Minneapolis campus Nov. 15, featuring two SNU guest lecturers. Shin Yong Moon and Woo Suk Hwang are members of the Seoul National University team who made international headlines last February when the team announced it had for the first time cloned human embryos to produce embryonic stem cells. From 242 eggs donated by 16 women, the team created 20 cloned embryos and one stem-cell line.

Inviting these pioneers is just the latest exchange in a fruitful relationship. In 1954, the federal Office of Economic Cooperation enlisted the University to undertake an educational aid project at Seoul. The connection to Minnesota was made by the agency’s director, former Minnesota governor and University alumnus Harold Stassen.

The Korean effort was the first time Minnesota’s Medical School entered into a relationship with a foreign medical school. It was the start of a mutually beneficial relationship that continues to this day. Along with the Medical School, the School of Nursing has been extensively involved with Seoul. “It’s been a wonderful exchange of ideas and knowledge that has gone both ways and definitely enriched the experience of both faculty and students” says Ruth Lindquist, the nursing school’s senior associate dean for academic and administrative affairs. One of the important areas has been the cross-fertilization of evidence-based nursing practice, to improve care in both countries.

When Gault arrived in Korea in 1959, the hospital was treating patients, but the staff lacked essential drugs and equipment. “I don't know how they ever survived, but they did,” recalls Gault, who served as dean of the Medical School from 1972 to 1984. Federal grants were used to rebuild and refurnish the hospital with supplies, equipment, and books.

Another major challenge was bringing the Seoul medical faculty up to speed. During the Korean War, many SNU faculty members had been killed or kidnapped by the communists; others saw scientific pursuits interrupted. In 1954, the school returned to its campus from the southern city of Pusan, where it had been in exile.

From March 1956 until the contract ended in 1961, the Medical School sent 11 advisors to Korea for various lengths of time. Members of the University’s graduate school faculty also advised 77 Korean faculty members who studied in Minnesota. A number of them earned advanced degrees and, adds Gault, all but four returned to Seoul.

Even after the federal contract ended in 1961, the schools continued their relationship, with a number of Koreans earning graduate degrees at Minnesota. Gault returned to Seoul in the late 1960s and helped architects hired by the China Medical Board of New York design a new, 1,000-bed hospital, which opened in 1978. Last year, the two schools began an exchange program in which students from each university spend one or two months as visitors at the other.

“The advancements in Korean health care have been fantastic,” says Gault. “When I was there (in 1959) there were eight medical schools; now there are more than 40.” When Gault returned for the 40th anniversary observance in 1994, the Seoul hospital’s computer networks were very advanced. “Wherever you were in the hospital, you could pull any X-ray up on a computer screen. They were so modern...way ahead of us, technologically.”

Gault says: “We introduced them to the modern method of medical education. They then had to make choices as to how they were going to use what they learned, to decide what would work in their culture.

“We prepared them to get the job done, and they did it.”