Mailbox of peace

Epi logue Mai lbox of Peace 158 159 Korea Foundation & US Peace Corps KF COVID-19 Survival Box Gratitude Letter Col lection Tube videos, and we wished we could have included all of these articles, vid- eos, and reactions in this book. The Peace Corps members completed their service and returned home in 1981, but thanks to the recognition from the New York Times and all these media outlets, Korea’s younger generation got a chance to learn about the Peace Corps and its important work. The phone in my office would not stop ringing. Someone called us to say that they encountered the Peace Corps when they were young; the person is now performing medical services as a doctor and wanted to find their teacher from back in the day. Another person, who first learned English from a Peace Corps member, went to the States to study and later became a professor in Korea. I also received dozens of calls from people who could not remember their teachers’ names but were trying to find them. Thankfully, Mr.James- Mayer from the Friends of Korea (FOK) helped with connecting Peace Corps members with their former students in Korea. In the 10 years that I have worked at the Korea Foundation, this was the first time I received such touching calls and messages of support from people. All of this became possible because of the memories of the Peace Corps mem- bers and the emotions people still associate with them, so I am both flattered and humbled by all the compliments and messages of gratitude I received . One of the best outcomes was that, after seeing the articles, we received many requests for the KF COVID-19 Survival Box. We had initially sent 563 survival box in October, and by February 2021, we had sent several more upon urgent requests. Thankfully, only one of these boxes was returned. But even that survival box, which had been stuck in Spanish customs for 3 months before returning back to Korea, we successfully delivered at the second attempt by sending it via diplomatic pouch with help from the Spanish Embassy in Korea. I was actually worried that more boxes would be returned to us, and I believe that many people we never met must have helped us along the way to make this project a great success. Unforgettable episode Since this was the first time we were carrying out such a project, there were many hurdles we had to overcome. Initially, we had wanted to send smart bands with temperature measuring features or eye massage machines along with the KF masks. However, we unfortunately had to abandon that plan after learning that electronic devices could not be sent through the EMS system. Imagine tying 50,000 masks into groups of 10 with rubber bands! For about a week, 5-6 people took care of this task to ensure the masks would not be damaged on their way to the States. A large truck from the post office went back and forth multiple times to pick up the over 500 big boxes. At one point, not long after sending the boxes, we received an email. Since the details on each of the boxes included the contents’ overall value of $260,