Launched on 8 April, 2022, the Korean Culture Centre Australia’s new exhibition, , introduces an Australian missionary family who, across two generations, was dedicated to serving some of Korea’s most vulnerable people.
Highlights
- ‘Australian Mackenzie family’s Journey in Korea’ exhibition runs until 8 July at the Korean Cultural Centre Australia in Sydney
- Photos vividly capture daily life in Korea from the 1910s to the 1970s
- Two generations of the Mackenzie family ran hospitals and orphanages in Korea
Reverend James Mackenzie, a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, was sent to Korea in 1910 to manage the first medical facility for people infected by leprosy.
Two of his daughters, Helen and Catherine, would go on to found a maternity hospital in Busan during the Korea War, eventually retiring in 1978 after nearly 30 years of medical practice.
Kim Ji-hee, director of the Korean Culture Centre, said the exhibition had been prepared to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and Australia last year, but was delayed due to COVID-19.
"For Australians, it introduces Korea from the Japanese colonial period and the Korean War to the modern era. It is an opportunity to look at the two countries' beautiful relationship which is older than diplomatic history," she said.
The Mackenzie family's story was not revealed in detail until after Helen and Catherine passed away in 2009 and 2005, respectively, as the publicity-shy sisters refused to be interviewed by media.
However, the discovery of more than 9,000 photographs and documents led to a 2016 exhibition atKyonggi University So-sung Museum in Korea.
The museum's curatorial team leader, Bae Dae-ho, told SBS Korean that he encountered the Australian family by accident in 2012.
"I personally knew one of the Mackenzie sister's disciples living in Melbourne, Kim Young Ok. As she knew that I worked for a museum, she asked me to check some old photos and records in the Ilsin Christian Hospital in Busan."
"So, I went to Busan to see them myself, and the photos there were just beyond my imagination," he said. 
Kyonggi University So-sung Museum curatorial team leader Mr Bae Daeho Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
Mr Bae explained that the photos kept at the hospital, which the Mackenzie sisters founded in 1952, vividly captured daily life in Korea from the 1910s to the 1970s.
The museum then began digitalising the photos and researching the family.
Reverend James Noble Mackenzie (매견시, 1865-1956)
Mr Bae said the life of James could be summed up by an article in the Melbourne-based newspaper The Sun from 1949.
"It said ‘Hollywood doesn't have to bring imagination to make a moving film about the life of James Mackenzie’, and I totally agree with that," Mr Bae said.
He also likened James to a “Korean version of Father Damien”, a Roman Catholic priest who dedicated his life to people with leprosy in Hawaii in the late 1800s.
A wedding photo of James Mackenzie and his wife Mary Kelly Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
James operated the Busan Leper Hospital, Korea's first medical institution specialising in treating people with Hansen's disease, for 29 years until 1938.
Leprosy or as it is known today Hansen’s disease is a chronic bacterial infection of the skin and superficial nerves. Today, it can be easily treated by specific drugs, but a century ago, it often led people to abandon infected patients and burn their property.
"It was called ‘heaven's punishment’ in Korea. People with leprosy may not feel pain due to damage to nerves, they do not realise that their skin is damaged, so their wounds are not treated appropriately until much tissue damage has occurred."
“Due to their appearance, people were scared to be around those with leprosy in case they would become infected. They were often kicked out of communities," Mr Bae said.
In 1912, the hospital looked after 54 patients.
At that time the death rate of leprosy was as high as 25 per cent, but by the 1930s it had dropped to two per cent. 
The Busan Leper Hospital Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
People in southern Korea flocked to the facility after hearing about its modern treatment.
The hospital grew to 40 wards – or around 14 soccer fields in size - and could accommodate 680 patients.
Even after treatment, many patients couldn’t return home. Around 1,000 people formed seven different communities and, with James’ blessing, lived near the Busan Leper Hospital.
Mary Jane Kelly (매부인, 1880-1964)
James' wife, Mary Kelly, had arrived as a missionary in Korea five years before her husband.
She ran a home for children whose parents had leprosy called 'The House for Healthy Children'. 
The House for Healthy Children, an orphanage for children left behind by leprosy Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
The couple's own five children including the eldest daughters Helen and Catherine, born in Korea had many friends among those children cared for in the home.
Helen Pearl (매혜란, 1913-2009)
Catherine Margaret Mackenzie (매혜영, 1915-2005)
In 1931, after graduating from Pyongyang Foreigners High School, the sisters returned to Australia.
Helen entered the University of Melbourne Medical School and became a doctor, while Catherine became a nurse after finishing a course at the Royal Children's Hospital Nursing School with post-graduate certificates in infant Welfare and Midwifery.
James, Helen and Catherine Mackenzie and Mary Kelly Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
Although their parents had returned to Australia in 1938, Helen and Catherine kept trying to enter Korea from 1940 to 1950 but were denied three times due to the Second World War and the Korean War.
While waiting for permission to enter the Korean peninsula, the sisters went to China as medical missionaries to set up a small hospital and worked there from 1945 to 1950.
Kim Young Ok, a Korean-Australian based in Melbourne, was one of the sisters' disciples.
"Both Helen and Catherine wanted to follow in their father's footsteps from when they were young,” she told SBS Korean.
“They said that if their father had been a doctor, he could have offered more to patients, so they always wanted to be medical practitioners."
"That's why they became a doctor and a nurse, and that's why they had to go back to Korea, no matter what," she said.
On 7 November, 1951, the sisters eventually departed Melbourne to Korea and they arrived in Busan on 13 February the following year.
Then on 17 September 1952, following advice from the UN and the Korean Government they set up Ilsin Women's Hospital to help women in childbirth and sick infants. 
Helen Mackenzie looking after a mother at Ilsin Women's Hospital Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
The hospital started in a kindergarten hall of the church in which they had grown up, with just 20 beds and five staff, including the sisters.
By 20 years later, the hospital had grown to have 231 staff and assisted in an average of 6,000 baby deliveries a year.
By the time they retired, 24,702 surgeries had been done, and 72,302 babies delivered, the result of Helen and Catherine's dedication.
The hospital was a bit different to others in that it accepted anyone regardless of their ability to pay.
"At that time, Helen did more than three operations per day. The more amazing thing was they treated 50 per cent of the patients for free in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the number of patients free of charge was 60 per cent, and it became 29 per cent in the 1970s," Mr Bae said.
The Mackenzie sisters also fought against prevailing discrimination against women in Korea and took measures to ensure girls had equal treatment to boys.
"Carrying twins was considered a high-risk pregnancy, so many twins were born in the hospital. The sisters found out that when the hospital sent boy and girl twins back home after the birth, usually the boy got more things to eat, and the girl wasn't fed enough," Mr Bae explained.
"The families were all poor, so they made that choice. The sisters made a policy that if one of the twins needed treatment or something to eat, it was required to bring both twins together to the hospital. Then they could also look after the girl."
Catherine Mackenzie (far right) and midwife trainees at Ilsin Women's Hospital Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
The Mackenzie sisters also provided job opportunities that favoured single mothers or poor people.
Like their parents, the sisters wanted to help patients get on with their lives even after discharge. Many patients went on to look after their families by working at the hospital.
Retired obstetrician, gynaecologist and Christian missionary Dr Barbara Martin worked with the Mackenzie sisters for 15 years and their friendship continued until the sisters' deaths.
Dr Martin was recruited by Ilsin Women's Hospital in 1963 and worked there for 32 years until her retirement.
The 88-year-old said one of the most significant impacts the Mackenzie sisters made in Korea was in training women doctors in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Nurses in midwifery.
At the time the hospital started the Korean medical system had changed from the Japanese to the American system, so nurses were only given 3 months of training in midwifery but graduated as Midwives.
"New nurses may not have even seen a baby born. So, they knew their inadequacy and wanted more training," Dr Martin said.
"It was very difficult for women medical graduates to get good training after graduation, and in those days, men didn't want to be trained under a woman. So, we only trained women," Dr Martin said. 
Dr Barbara Martin (centre) with midwifery graduates at Ilsin Women's Hospital in 1981 Source: Dr Barbara Martin
By the time Helen retired in 1976, 12 doctors had been trained in obstetrics and gynaecology. The figure had increased to 149 in 2014.
Catherine, who published the first midwifery textbook in Korea, which came out on the day she left the country in 1978, trained 1,036 midwives who came from and were sent to all over Korea.
Dr Martin added that the hospital's championing of antenatal care had saved the lives of many mothers and infants.
Helen handed over her position as the hospital director to a Korean doctor and returned to Australia in 1976, and Catherine followed her sister in 1978.
The sisters hadn't been paid in over 20 years for their services.
When they returned home, they brought with them only the baggage they had originally taken to Korea.
Back in Australia, they took an active part in the fundraising organised by the Australian church for Korean patients needing free treatment.
They collected $170,000, equivalent to about $1.27 million today.
Retired Korean-Australian midwife Mrs Kim stayed close to the sisters for 33 years.
The 74-year-old said Catherine trained her as a midwife in 1968. After working in Korea for a couple of years, Mrs Kim came to Melbourne to study midwifery and later settled down with an Australian husband in 1976.
She said after their retirement, the sisters lived frugal lives.
"When I went to the sisters' house for the first time, I couldn't believe it. They lived in a little house inherited from their father, which had the tiniest kitchen and bathroom. They didn't even have a car and lived on a government pension."
"They were a hospital director and nursing director back in Korea, and they had chosen these lives without possessions. I was so shocked," Mrs Kim said.
Front: Catherine, Sheila (younger sister) and Helen Mackenzie/Back: Kim Young Ok and her husband Robert Dowling Source: Kim Young Ok
According to Mrs Kim, the sisters rejected all offers of financial support from the hospital in Busan, and sent money gifts from their students who became successful doctors and nurses for donation.
Despite Helen and Catherine’s reluctance, she said many disciples came to Australia to throw big 80th birthday parties for each sister in 1993 and 1995.
Mrs Kim described the Mackenzie sisters as “living saints”.
"They led lives of non-possession, and they gave everything they had to others. They may have had nothing in the eyes of many, but they actually had so much and were always so calm," she said.
Mr Bae, from the So-sung Museum, said the Mackenzie family's journey in Korea has not ended.
"We found a photo of many well-dressed Korean people standing up in front of an orphanage building run by Mary Kelly. The photo was taken in 1942 when no Mackenzies were living in Korea." 
A photo of many well-dressed Korean people standing in front of an orphanage building run by Mary Kelly Source: Kyonggi University So-sung Museum
"We found out later that these people played big roles in helping the sisters to set up a hospital in such a short time, nine months after returning to Korea. The children raised in the mother's orphanage received an excellent education and became successful figures in Korea."
"For example, one of them was an architect for the sisters’ four-story hospital building built in 1955, and others also supported the sisters in various roles,” Mr Bae said.
Ilsin Women's Hospital was renamed Ilsin Christian Hospital and has been operating for 70 years in the spirit of the Mackenzie Sisters.
Helen and Catherine never married and had no children. However, their nephew, Charles Lane, attended the exhibition's opening.
"I'm aware of the great esteem in which my aunts Helen and Cath were held in Busan, especially in the hospital and church. And so I think it's wonderful that their story is brought to Australia in this way," Mr Lane said.
Helen and Catherine Mackenzie's nephew, Charles Lane Source: SBS Korean program
Australian Mackenzie family’s Journey in Korea
- 8 April – 8 July
- Korean Cultural Centre Australia (255 Elizabeth St, Sydney, NSW, 2000)
- Free general admission
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