And in his case, very close to a miracle. When Chung was 3 years old, both his hands were completely severed in an accident. Then, in a rare and risky operation, they were successfully reattached. "To have function of his hands after having them severed is monumental," says Robin Schroeder, associate dean of student affairs at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, from which Chung graduated in May. "But to have the dexterity to be a surgeon is amazing."
Chung's against-all-odds saga started in 1978 as he played hide-and-seek with pals in Uijungbu, South Korea, near Seoul. Ducking behind a tractor, the curious toddler reached out to touch the whirring engine. In a split second the fan blades severed both his hands at the wrists.
Chung's horrified father saw the accident from his apartment window. He and his wife filled a bucket with ice and ran to their screaming son.
Both hands lay on the ground; the left was intact, but the right thumb had been cut off.
The boy's parents carried him to a hospital just blocks away, but it was a national holiday and no specialists could be found. So Chung's father, John, an Army surgeon, reattached Woosik's hands himself. With his wife, Haewon, 53, a nurse, and other staff assisting, John operated on his son for more than nine hours. "I had never completed a surgery like that," says John, 55. "But I was desperate. I prayed to God and did my best."
His best, it turns out, was superb. Although Chung couldn't move his hands when the casts were removed two months later, he did regain full motion a couple of years later. For that Chung bows to his maternal grandfather, Byungdal Gong, a tae kwon do grand master, who used the martial art as the boy's sole physical therapy program. Chung trained for several hours a day. "He was firm, but it was never like I was afraid of him," says Chung. "Discipline took root, and when it did, I thrived."
His scars, now mostly faded, brought taunts from schoolmates in Uijungbu—who called him Frankenstein—and again in the southern African nation of Malawi, where the family moved when he was 7. Says Chung: "I was in fights every day."
At 14 he moved with his family to the U.S., where Chung attended the Lawrenceville School, an elite New Jersey boarding school. He went on to Yale University—where he was a tae kwon do champ, ranking second in the U.S. in his weight class—and earned a degree in molecular biophysics in 1997. He considered trying out for the 2000 Olympics but opted for medicine instead. "When he told me," says his father, now in private practice in Trenton, "I was very happy."
Chung's professors were wowed. "This kid, even as a first-year student, had skills equivalent to someone with six years' experience," says Howard Kiernan, an orthopedic surgeon at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. "And he's great with patients too." Chung's profs had no inkling of his ordeal until last summer, when he described it in an application essay for the residency program at Columbia-Presbyterian. When the story came out, says associate dean Schroeder, "I told my children about him, I was so impressed."
When he finishes his five-year residency, Chung knows exactly what he wants to be: a hand surgeon. "The best way I can thank my dad," says Chung, "is to help others in similar situations."
Christina Cheakalos
Matt Birkbeck in New York City
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- Matt Birkbeck.
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