0203 Lepers and Ludwig

This is not a postcard about South Korea. It is a postcard about compassion and connection that just happens to take place in South Korea on Sorok Island, located one kilometer off the southwest coast. Until last year, this isolated island was accessible only by intermittent ferry making it the perfect site for a leper colony. Which is what it has been for about 100 years. Then, last year, the Korean government built a bridge. This connected Sorok Island with the mainland but more than that it re-connected the remaining 73 patients with a society that shunned it. Thus bridging worked on two levels here: the concrete and the metaphorical. Thanks to the concrete bridge, the British Philharmonic Orchestra was able to come and perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony which, in turn, created a spiritual bridge, connecting art and souls. #ceas #hacker #SouthKorea