YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — U.S. Army Lt. Col. Hyun S. Sim finished the half-marathon at Jamsil last Sunday well after his normal two-and-a-half hour mark.
But the 60-year-old anesthesiologist hardly cared. He had stopped just after the seven-mile mark in the Korea’s Defense Daily Soldier Marathon to save a man’s life.
Sim, chief of anesthesiology at the 121st General Hospital at Yongsan Garrison, was honored Friday for his life-saving efforts with a letter of appreciation from Kim June-pum, the director of the General Defense News Agency.
On Sunday, Sim had just passed the halfway point of the race when he saw that a small crowd of runners had stopped. He saw a young Korean man lying unconscious on the ground, with blood on his forehead.
Sim said he was unsure why the young Korean man fell.
“I look over and see that person’s color not that good,” Sim said during an interview at the 121st General Hospital Friday morning. “He wasn’t breathing.”
Sim began CPR while the runners standing around him grabbed his phone to call for help. Sim was the only runner in the crowd who happened to have a phone, carrying it because he was on-call, he said.
After about five or six minutes of CPR, the man began breathing again, though he didn’t regain consciousness, Sim said. An ambulance came about 15 to 20 minutes later, and Sim finished the race.
Sim already ran one marathon and four half-marathons this year. His next big race is in March.
