1. The 2nd Lee Tae-seok Award ceremony will take place in the Reception Hall in the Foreign Ministry building at 16:30-17:30 on November 27, with Foreign Minister Kim Sung-Hwan in attendance.

2. This year’s Lee Tae-seok Award will be presented to nurse Baek Young-shim in recognition of her dedication to medical volunteer service in Malawi, one of the poorest African countries with almost no medical service, which has also earned her the nickname “Nightingale of Malawi.”

° Nurse Baek has undertaken medical volunteer work in Kenya and Malawi since 1990. She established a public healthcare facility and a 200-bed hospital in Malawi in 1994 and 2008, respectively. She continued her devotional service, including setting up Daeyang Nursing College in 2010, while fighting cancer.

3. The Lee Tae-seok Award is one of the Foreign Minister’s Awards established in 2011 in honor of the spirit of devotion of the late Father Lee Tae-seok. He had passed away in January 2010 after providing medical and educational service to the poor in the remote South Sudanese region of Tonj from 2001 till 2008. The Award serves as a token of appreciation presented to Korean volunteers for their exemplary service in Africa.

4. The awarding event is expected to serve as an opportunity to raise the public awareness that they can contribute to addressing common issues of the international community, such as the eradication of poverty and diseases, through volunteer work. 


                          Spokesperson and Deputy Minister for Public Relations of MOFAT

* unofficial translation