Director Lee Uk of the Korea-Vietnam Cooperation Center at Taingwai prefecture of Hatai province in a rural area north Vietnam teaches Vietnamese carpentry. "Three fourths of the Vietnamese population are farmers so they are potentially unemployed. I want to give them the possibility to dream of independence by training them as carpenters."
The center was founded in 1997 as part of the umbrella civic group Global Sharing. Currently there are about 40 young Vietnamese youths learning high-quality woodwork techniques. The center also provides artificial arms and legs to the physically challenged
and supports poor farmers by providing them with calves. In December 1999, 15 of the center's first graduates got job placements in Libya.
Director Lee came to the center in January last year. He came to Vietnam as a volunteer specialist for the United Nations' Development Programme which aims to restore the environment and abolish poverty throughout the world.
Lee was born in Wonju, Gangwon Province and worked at a furniture factory for 8 years straight after he graduated from high school. At the age of 26 in 1972 he entered the art department of Dongguk University and then worked as a vocational trainer at Jeongsu Vocational Training School and at the Korea Manpower Agency. Then from the late 1980s he gave six to eight month long training sessions abroad in Sri Lanka, Egypt and Gabon. "The pleasure in my life is to see people who used to suffer from hunger live earnestly by working hard and making their own money," Lee said.
(From Hatai, Vietnam, Kim Min-sik, callin-u@chosun.com)
