​Former nurse Marianne Stoeger exchanges hellos with people at a Roman Catholic church on Sorokdo Island. The Austrian former nurse, often called an 'angel' by residents there due to her devotion to people with leprosy on the island for some 40 years, recently revisited Sorokdo.

On April 14 on Sorokdo Island in Goheung, a southern seaside town in Jeollanam-do Province, residents were busy preparing to welcome a guest. "Nurse Angel" Marianne Stoeger was revisiting Sorokdo some 11 years after she said her goodbyes in 2005.

In 1962, Stoeger, then a twentysomething Austrian and a graduate of nursing school, came to Sorokdo Island with her colleague Margreth Pissarek. The two Austrians came here to provide medical services for people on the island with leprosy and they devotedly took care of their patients for 43 years. The local residents, due to their devotion to their patients, called them the "living angels."

Marianne Stoeger takes care of a child of a patient on Sorokdo in the 1960s. The devoted nurse recently revisited the island 11 years after she left.

In November 2005, the two quietly left the island. "We wanted to leave before we turned into some kind of burden, as we were getting older and weren't very helpful anymore," they said in a letter left for the people of Sorokdo.

Though they have remained in contact with visitors from Korea and with some people from Sorokdo, this is the first time that Stoeger has revisited the island since she left 11 years ago.

Her visit has been made possible thanks to an invitation to a celebration that will mark the 100th anniversary of the Sorokdo National Hospital this coming May. The hospital, along with Goheung-gun County and the local branch of the Roman Catholic Church, invited both Stoeger and Pissarek to the celebration, but the latter has not been able to attend due to health concerns.

The Roman Catholic Church said that Stoeger spent her first week back on Sorokdo, where she lived 40 years of her life, just as she used to: alongside staff at the hospital and at the church. She's staying at her old house, praying in the morning and at night, and visiting patients, old friends and colleagues at the hospital. She'll return to Austria at the end of next month.

As part of the hospital's 100th anniversary celebrations, the Goheung-gun County Office is planning to put forth the names of Pissarek and Stoeger as nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Finally, the Marianne-Margreth Foundation will film a documentary that looks back on the two's lives on Sorokdo Island and release it to the public around the end of this year.

By Chang Iou-chung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Sorokdo Catholic Church, Goheung-gun County Office
icchang@korea.kr