Lee Ji-sun, 32, calls herself a "burned-out life.” She means it literally. In 2000, when she was a senior at Ewha Womans University, she became a victim of a car accident, which seriously burned 55 percent of her body.
Her doctor told her that it was a "miracle” she was still alive.
Yet as a young woman who was severely disfigured, how to face reality became a big challenge.
Lee’s mother encouraged her to discover one thing to be thankful every day. It was a good suggestion.
Lee soon discovered that she could still do many things with her burned body. For example, she was thankful when she was for the first time able to walk to the restroom on her own. She was thankful when she was able to move her fingers again enough to button up her clothes. She was also grateful when she was able to again utter the words, "My brother,” using her burned lips.
"After I began to look for something to be thankful, I realized that actually there were many out there. I also slowly realized that hardship can be a biggest blessing,” she said in the report.
She began to share her new life on a web blog (www.eszun.net), including her medical treatment, rehabilitation, and how she psychologically coped with her changed life. And her writing exuded hope, not despair.
For the last 10 years, her blog has been a source of hope and solace for many other people who were going through their own difficulties in life.
"Life is a gift,” Lee told the local daily, Chosun Ilbo. "I have realized I have only one life. And what happened to me is less important than how I deal with it.”
She doesn’t pretend it was easy. So far, she has gone through about 30 skin grafts, the most recent in July, "Since I have done so many grafts, now I am running of skin that I could use,” she said, with a smile.
She wasn’t simply dealing with her pain. She got back on her life, subsequently getting two master’s degrees at Boston University in counseling and social welfare at Columbia University. Now, she is a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA in the same field.
In Korea, whenever she went out she became the subject for people’s stare. But in the States, people didn’t do it. Lee believes that’s the result of the campaign for the human rights for the disabled in the United States for the last 50 years. And this is the field she wants to improve in South Korea.
