Thursday, February 1, 2001

By Jim Lea
Osan bureau chief

Jeromy Cross / Stars and Stripes Retired Air Force Chaplain (Col.) Russell Blaisdell, 90, is greeted by 102-year-old retired orphanage director Whang On-soon Saturday in South Korea. It was the first time they had seen each other since the Korean War.

Retired Air Force Col. Russell Blaisdell received an honorary doctor of social welfare degree on Tuesday from Kyunghee University in Seoul for rescuing 1,000 orphans during the Korean War.

Blaisdell, 90, was a 5th Air Force chaplain in Seoul in 1950 who helped to establish a small orphanage sponsored by the command. He also helped establish the Seoul Orphans Center sponsored by the city government and supported by the Air Force.

In December 1950, he overcame many obstacles to spirit more than 1,000 of the orphans and orphanage administrators from the capital to Cheju Island as Chinese forces were bearing down on Seoul.

"This degree commemorates Chaplain Blaisdell’s heroic effort to save the lives of children who had been orphaned by the war and who probably would have been killed when the city of Seoul was recaptured in 1951," a school spokesman said.

Because of his efforts, Blaisdell has been dubbed the "Schindler of Korea" by the South Korean press, in reference to Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who save thousands of Jews from extermination by the Nazis in World War II.

Blaisdell arrived in Korea last week for a reunion with many of the orphans he saved, and with Whang On-soon, 102, who was director of the Orphans Home of Korea where the children were cared for on Cheju. The orphanage was moved to Seoul after the war.

The Kyunghee spokesman said Whang also was honored during Tuesday’s ceremony. She was presented with a medal by the Global Cooperation Society International, a U.N.-affiliated organization that works to improve social welfare.

Bae Gi-chul contributed to this report.

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