[ChosunIlbo] Mr. Kim, Challenging bike trips to help cancer patients

“It’s lung cancer, stage 4”

When the diagnosis was pronounced by doctor, I felt as if I had been falling upside down from a high cliff to the ground. Attacked by the fear and the despair at the moment my whole life which had been rooted in a firm ground seemed to be shaken from the very bottom. Tear didn’t stop running over the cheeks.

It was my wife who broke the silence, ‘Honey, now we take the cancer as a new mate’. Wiping tear on my face she pretended to be calm as if nothing had been happened. But I could see her pupil shaking, myself reflected on her eyes was also shaking. It was a year ago.

My life does not belong only to myself but also to my better half whom I found at the late stage of my life. We married in 2007. It was the first marriage for me but second for my wife who had been a widow. I spent lots of time abroad and enjoyed the nomad life and freedom. And the encounter with my wife put an end to my 55-year long bachelor life. My wife was the reason to survive the cancer. 

While taking the unendurable anti-cancer treatments, being lethargic only thing I could do was lying and watching TV to kill the painful time. One day my wife encouraged me to take a promenade and we started to walk together around the hill in neighborhood. And I could feel wild flowers blooming, breeze blowing and gravels under the feet. And then those creatures started to touch me, the body and the soul. At a certain moment I regained the energy to walk and hike.

On a hike to Mt. Bukhan, my wife said “Isn’t it time for us to move on to the promise we made to travel around the world with bike?” I was reminded of one thing out of the bucket list. My wife and I had a plan to travel over the world after retirement on May next year. The idea came to my mind that I could do something to bring hope to my folks and the others around the world who are suffering from cancer. During the given time I wanted to the seize the chance to transform my life which has been lived only for myself into something altruistic.

I started my career at the Seoul branch of a Japanese trading company and I was engaged in trading business all along the career path. Once I run my own company at a very center of Seoul and made fortune, but the heyday didn’t last long. I closed down the business in Seoul and moved to Australia in 1986. After having carried on trading business for 20 years in Australia I came back to Korea and opened a furniture importing company but failed. And now I am employed in the Embassy of Sri Lanka in Seoul as a local staff in charge of labor management.      

This overseas experience can be an asset for the travel plan. My final aim of this ‘World- Bike travel for worldwide cancer patients’ is to establish a charity foundation. The example case is Lance Armstrong who defeated cancer and established the Lance Armstrong Foundation to support those who suffer cancer. I am sure bike can be a good tool to deliver the message ‘no pain no gain’.

I tried to find more cases to study and made acting plans. The first thing was to write letters to many different organizations in order to get support: the pharmaceutical company which manufactures the medicine I am taking, American Universities, charity foundations and etc.. Surprisingly the positive interests and insights have been shown. A Sri Lankan diplomat helps me draft letters in English, designers working in the same building volunteered to make logo of the project, a coffee shop owner next to my office promised any help he can and a friend at church showed his willingness regarding translational help. The cancer brought me fellows whom I share the life with.   

The project is called for now ‘Cycling for Cure’. From the beginning of the next year I will be visiting those who have cancers one by one around Korea. With the cooperation of the pharmaceutical company, checking the list of the medicine-takers I will go by bike and see them and share the hope. I might be cycling 2-3 hours each weekend. 

I still need the help from many different areas of society; planner of the hope-sharing- travel, the person who takes a supervision job or anybody who donates her/his talent in whichever way they can. Only God knows when to stop this path. But if my stepping into new chapter of life and the initiative I am taking touches any body’s heart, I’d say it’s enough.

 "Mr. Kim, Challenging bike trips to help cancer patients"

The Chosun Ilbo, 21th Sep.2011[한국어 기사 보기]