Mailbox of peace

Amer ica Hot Issue Mai lbox of Peace 136 137 Korea Foundation & US Peace Corps KF COVID-19 Survival Box Gratitude Letter Col lection It was a gift from the South Korean government that contained 100 masks and other items “ as a token of our gratitude for your dedication to Korea .” “ It was as if this box had been traveling to me since 1968 ,” said Ms . Nathan , a retired civil rights and labor lawyer . “ There was something magical about the box . Some people , Korean people , very far away wanted to make sure that I was OK ; that I had what I needed to fight a bad disease . They behaved as though they cared and were responsible for me .” Decades ago , South Koreans felt similarly toward Ms . Nathan and 2 , 000 oth- er Peace Corps volunteers . When the young Americans served as teachers and health care workers between 1966 and 1981 , South Korea was a third - world country stricken by disease , a dictatorship , poverty and destruction left by the Korean War . South Korea is now one of the richest countries in the world , and its re- sponse to the coronavirus pandemic has been held up as an example for other nations , even as it deals with a small uptick in cases . In October , to pay back some of its debt , the government - run Korea Foun- dation said it was sending its Covid - 19 Survival Boxes to 514 former Peace Corps volunteers . South Korea was a country stricken by disease and poverty in the time Ms. Nathan and other Peace Corps volunteers spent there. © Kim Chon-Kil/Associated Press Decades ago , a young American woman served an impoverished South Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer . Now the country is an economic power- house , and it decided to send her a token of its gratitude . SEOUL , South Korea — Sandra Nathan spent 1966 to 1968 in a South Korean town as a young Peace Corps volunteer , teaching English to high school girls . Fifty - two years later , Ms . Nathan , now back in the United States , received a care package from South Korea that nearly brought her to tears . Ms . Nathan , 75 , had been feeling increasingly isolated at home in Stephen- town , N . Y . Reports about the exploding number of Covid - 19 cases in the Unit- ed States had made her anxious about going outside , where experts warned of second and third waves of infection . Then , early this month , she received a package labeled “ Covid - 19 Survival Box .” Sandra Nathan teaching a class in South Korea in the late 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer. © via Sandra Nathan America Hot Issue “ She Helped South Korea in Its Time of Need . In the Pandemic , It Repaid Her ” < New York Times > November 20, 2020