Thank you very much for your kind comments which I may not deserve.

I was fortunate to be a part of Art Club (미술부) for 6 years while attending

the medical college to meet excellent artists and lifetime friends.

My brushes lay aside while I was busy working at the hospital and raising a family with my wife.

It wasn't until my work on a short-term medical mission trip down the Amazon River in Peru

when I picked up my ink pen and reignited my creative fervor.

While treating hundreds of patients in tiny river villages, I started to draw people I encountered

and the surrounding scenery in a small sketchbook during breaks.

Copies of those pen drawings were shared with people who donated medicine, money

and prayed for the mission expeditions. After many years of medical practice

and mission trips, I retired and moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2013.

My life in Ethiopia for the past 5 years was like a dream. I enjoyed the opportunity to meet

friendly people and painting in my leisure time. I am pleased to share the paintings

and you could feel the joy I had while I was in Africa too.

Thank you very much allowing the story published in this homepage.

Hope you are doing well and healthy.

Due to Covid-19, we have been locked down and could not travel overseas now.

A mission hospital in Egypt installed a new CT scan recently and begging me to come to help

but my wife would not allow going back. I help by reading CT scans from a mission hospital

in Cameroon and also another small mission hospital in a remote village in Ethiopia by the Internet.

The technology is amazing and I could access the images of CT scans immediately

and the surgeons can operate the patients after receiving the result of interpretation.

However, I wish I could go back to meet those godly people serving in those hospitals

and maybe paint again.

Thank you very much, Sir.

I have been richly blessed that I was able to spend some time in the right place right time.

I have been doing Interventional Radiology procedures which I have not done for more than 30 years

during my practice. I decided to go back to Korea to get 3 months short crash course of IR

before starting biopsy and drainage, etc.

But I realized my skill and knowledge were limited from such a short time of learning.

I was fortunate to meet the experts in the field in many university hospitals while I was in Korea

and invited them to help us. With 10 IR professors who committed to visit once a year to spend

one week at a time, we developed a 2-year IR fellowship program.

The Korean IR professors taught chemoembolization for HCC during one weekly visit

and I covered the rest of 3 weeks a month.

In August 2018, five young Ethiopian radiologists became the first IR specialists in Ethiopia!

Now they are teaching the second group of the program successfully.

What a privilege to be a part of the project! Thank you, and be safe and healthy!

황규정 선배님,

감사합니다. 분에 넘치는 찬사에 몸둘바를 모르겠습니다.

다행히 이해하여 주는 아내와 건강과 모든 여건이 5년 동안을 에티오피아에서 지낼 수 있었고, 그림도 그리면서 많은 사람들을 만나고 꿈속에서나 보낸듯한 경험을 할수 있었던 것이 축복이고 은혜였습니다. 지금도 여러 나라에서 언제 오느냐는 성화에 사양을 하면서 눈앞에 선한 풍경과 사람들의 미소가 아롱 거립니다.

선배님, 건강하시고 즐거운 하루 하루를 지내시기를 기원합니다.  홍건 배상

No, sir. I left Ethiopia in 2018 and now I am back in Chicago. The Ethiopian radiologists are doing the interventional procedures, but I am afraid they do not do sclerotherapy.