"장애도 멈추지 못한 과학의 열정"...한국의 스티븐 호킹 이상묵 교수
Accidents can lead to permanent disabilities that make everyday life almost impossible.
However, a life-changing accident hasn't stopped Professor Lee Sang-mook from sharing his passion for Earth sciences.
Park Se-young has more.
A professor in an electric wheelchair is presiding over a research conference.
He moves the computer mouse using his breath and writes his thesis through voice recognition.
“There are unsolved mysteries of the Earth’s interior. One of them is how the earth’s oceanic crust is created and evolves back to extinction 200 million years later.”
Professor Lee Sang-mook began his career as a marine scientist at the recommendation of his father.
He worked as a researcher from 1998 and has also been a professor at Seoul National University since 2003.
But in 2006, while on a field trip in the U.S. with his students, the professor was critically injured in a road accident and became quadriplegic.
The injury left him paralyzed from the neck down but he returned to school in an electric wheelchair.
“A scientist is a person who always thinks and tries to find answers. That’s the lifelong work of a scientist and I’ve been trained to do that my whole life.”
The professor says the accident has given him more chances to challenge himself.
His goal is to solve the secrets of the Earth through oceanic seismic observations and minimize the damage of earthquakes on the Korean Peninsula.
Park Se-young, Arirang News.
