Cancer is a well-known disease to Korean people. It’s usually because of its dangerousness, but its familiarity also contributes to it. 3% of Korean people have been diagnosed with cancer. However, more than 50% of cancer patients survive for more than 5 years. Also, if cancer patients live 5 years without a recurrence of cancer, they are considered to be completely recovered. The number of cancer survivors recently became almost a million.

However, these million cancer survivors have almost no way to get back to work. During years of recovery, their companies press them to resign, so they have to quit their jobs. In addition, after recovery, very few jobs are allowed to them due to their medical history, age, and career break. Then, the cancer survivors’ families have to live with lower income, having no money stored because of hospital bills. Actually, because of these reasons, about 85% of cancer survivors lose their jobs during the recovery. It must be a very serious problem.

We can find such victims of cancer nearby. For example, Chungho Lee, who was working at a famous company, couldn’t help but quit his work because of cancer. He wasn’t actually told to quit his job, but he said, “I heard that the company said how long they should take care of him. I considered it as an advice to resign, so I resigned.” Fortunately, he got transplant surgery and his cancer was completely cured. After he was cured, he couldn’t find a new job. He said, “When I ask my friends to look for a new job, they all mumbled and hesitated.” Also, there are more people who have had to resign because of cancer. Yoojeong Kim, who had cancer 5 years ago, said, “When I quit my job to cure cancer, I never talked about my cancer to anyone except for my family. It was because if my medical history is known to people, I will hardly get back to my job.” In addition, in a survey about how people think about cancer patients, 57.3% of people answered that survivors from cancer are likely to have lower abilities than normal people.

Cancer survivors also have to stand discrimination from society. Discrimination from society makes the survivors more depressed. For example, in a survey, 63.2% of people said that they wanted to avoid marriages with cancer survivors or one of their family members. This is because cancer often occurs because of heredity, so people care about family medical history when they get married. Also, female survivors often hear people saying, “Doesn’t cancer or medicine have a bad effect on babies?”, so they have difficulties getting married. In addition, it’s also a serious problem that cancer survivors don’t get enough care.

After surgery, the only way to cure cancer is to go to the hospital over and over until the cancer is completely cured. Because of this, they have to give up their jobs. Also, they can’t get any good information or advice about how to take care of their health after cancer. Although cancer survivors are 4 times more likely to get cancer, they feel bad about hospitals because of their painful recovery process and don’t want to go to the hospital anymore. It’s important for society and the government to support cancer survivors’ health care and help them to overcome difficulties to get back to society.

2018.01.23 Jang Hoyeon