FEATURE
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Tim Warnberg’s Legacy Deserves Notice: Part I By Dr. Marcy Tanter
Gwangju News, July 2022
gwangjunewsgic.com
“D
oes anyone know the name of that guy?” “Which guy?” “The one in the plaid shirt.” “Oh, that’s Tim. Tim Warnberg. “ In the summer of 2017, I was a visiting professor at Chonnam National University. I taught an English literature course in their international summer school program. While I was there, I heard about the Gwangju Uprising for the first time and did some research to learn about it. One of the first photos I came across is the (I learned later) famous one that shows five men carrying an injured man on a stretcher. I was struck by the fact that the man in the middle of the photo is obviously Caucasian, and I wondered who he was and what he was doing in the middle of the Uprising. Especially curious is the fact that he is wearing plastic sandals instead of shoes, and the
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man in front of him seems to be barefoot. They must have dropped everything to carry the stretcher and get the injured man to the hospital. I found out later that this was Tim Warnberg. Tim was a 24-yearold American Peace Corps volunteer who lived in Gwangju and worked at Chonnam University Hospital as a Hansen’s Disease case worker. During the Uprising, he remained in the city to help take care of the citizens.1 Tim was selfless during that time, doing all that he could to aid the citizens, and he has long been recognized for his contributions. There is no question that Tim played an important role in Gwangju before, during, and after the Uprising. The more I learned about him, and the goodness of the other PCVs who stayed to help the Gwangju citizens, the more I wanted to meet him and express my appreciation. As I asked questions about Tim, I discovered that he had passed away in 1993. Unfortunately, Tim
2022-06-24 �� 3:45:44
