Practice Lesson 5

ACCIDENTAL SAVIOUR

1 After escaping a plane crash that killed over 120 people, SEOL IK SOO returned to
rescue survivors.

Self-preservation is the most powerful of instincts. No greater force unthinkingly moves living
2 beings. To deny it is to fight nature itself. To do so in the cause of preserving another person’s life
demands a super-human willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice— to accept consciously that an 5
untimely death is possible, probable, and even inevitable.

Such was the unspeakable test confronting Seol Ik Soo. An Air China Boeing 767 passenger jet had
3 turned the South Korean mountaintop where it smacked down into a wasteland of twisted metal,
charred fuselage and shattered trees. Aboard was Seol, a 25-year-old trainee for a tour company
helping to bring South Korean tourists home from Beijing. The first indication anything was wrong 10
came just minutes before the plane was due to touch down at Kimhae Airport near the southern port
city of Pusan. Sitting in his hospital bed three days after the crash, Seol recalls feeling the aircraft
shudder twice, then hearing a crashing sound. The plane seemed to glide up the side of a mountain.
The lights died and sparks flashed up and down the cabin. He looked to his right and saw that rows
of seats had simply vanished. Passengers were screaming in the darkness. Seol’s first thought was: 15
“I’m dead.” When he saw a hole with light showing through, he made his way toward it and crawled
through. Only then did he realise he had survived.

4 Seol knew the sparks inside the cabin could trigger an explosion and thought, “I have to run.” But
the other passengers who had followed him out had collapsed beside the plane. He yelled at them to
move, then hoisted a survivor onto his back and carried him down a treacherously muddy slope to a 20
flat clearing. He remembers hauling at least three or four injured people to safety, maybe as many as
10. “I don’t know where the energy came from,” he said later, “but it felt like I wasn’t carrying
anything at all.”

Seol took other burned and disoriented survivors by the hand and guided them down the slope. Once
5 they were in the clearing, he pulled off his shirt and tore it into tourniquets for the wounded. He used 25
his belt to bind up a man’s badly bleeding leg. When he saw a victim with a hole in his skull, he re-
membered a trick he’d seen in a movie: pulling the foil out of a cigarette package, he wet it with
saliva and stuck it to the wound. It wasn’t until he sat down and lit a cigarette that he realised his
own face was drenched in blood. “I can’t believe it,” he marvels. “I couldn’t have done it in my right
30
mind.”

6 No, he did it because he has the right heart. As an accidental saviour, Seol is perhaps the purest kind
of hero. He is not motivated, say, by a premeditated desire to achieve greatness (though he has
already accomplished that in the eyes of those he rescued). He is just an ordinary guy who did
something extraordinary because it was the right thing to do. “I know Seol as cheerful and
hardworking, but just a normal young man,” says his boss at the Kirin Travel Agency, Kim Yu 35
Seok. “Now I am very surprised. I have a new view of him. He is a remarkable person. We’re all
very proud.”

The people closest to Seol aren’t surprised he rose to the occasion. After his father lost his left arm
7 in a motorcycle accident, Seol, who was six at the time, used to say he wanted to become a scientist
so he could replace the missing limb, his mother Koo Ho Soon recalls. At university, Seol found a 40
man injured in a motorcycle accident lying alone on the road. He picked him up, hailed a taxi and
took him to hospital. He’s embarrassed when his mother reminds him of the incident. Says Seol:
“My parents always brought me up to believe people and life are very precious.”

A. Mannan Shafik// O/A Level English. Phone: 01713 043858; 01613 043858; 01973 043858
 Practice Lesson 5
Seol may need plastic surgery to patch up some nasty cuts to his face. The emotional scars will be
8
harder to heal. Since the crash he has needed pills to sleep. Every time he tries to close his eyes, he 45
feels the terrible shaking of the crash and sees the anguished faces at the site of the wreckage,
particularly one hysterical woman who lost her baby. Sitting in his hospital room with his wife of
one month, he says, he wants nothing more to with the travel business. His only plan for now: get
some rest.

(By Donald Macintyre/From TIME)

From Paragraph 2

1) What does a person need to sacrifice his own life to save another’s?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

From Paragraph 3

2) Why was Seol there in the aircraft?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

3) The plane seemed to glide up the side of a mountain. What reference later in the paragraph
suggests that the plane did not ultimately land horizontally?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

4) “When he saw a hole....”. what made him see the hole?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

From Paragraph 4

5) “I have to run”. In your own words, write why Seol thought of running?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

6) “..carried him down a treacherously muddy slope..” Why do you think the writer call the
slope as ‘treacherous’?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

A. Mannan Shafik// O/A Level English. Phone: 01713 043858; 01613 043858; 01973 043858
 Practice Lesson 5
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[2]

7) “..but it felt like I wasn’t carrying anything at all.” Why do you think he felt so?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

From Paragraph 5

8) “He pulled of his shirt”. Why does the author used the phrase ‘pulled off’ instead of take off
or unbuttoned?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

9) “..he realised his own face was drenched in blood.” Why do you think he could realize his
own wound at this point of the time?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [1]

10) “he remembered a trick he’d seen in a movie..” In your own words, explain what the trick
was.

…………………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[2]

From Paragraph 6
11) “ Seol is perhaps the purest kind of hero.” Which two other single words later in the
paragraph suggest his heroism?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………......………………………………………………….. [2]

12) “Now I am surprised.” Why do you think Seol’s boss was surprised at Seol’s deed?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[1]

From Paragraph 7

13) Why weren’t the people closest to Seol surprised at his superhuman job?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…

A. Mannan Shafik// O/A Level English. Phone: 01713 043858; 01613 043858; 01973 043858
 Practice Lesson 5
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[2]

14) What contribution did Seol’s parents have in his great deed?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[1]

From Paragraph 8

15) “The emotional scars will be harder to heal”. In your own words, write what causes the
emotional scars.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………......…………………………………………………..

[2]

From the passage as a whole:

16) Choose five of the following words. For each of them give one word or short phrase (of not
more than seven words) which has the same meaning that the word or phrase has in the
passage.

Preservation (paragraph 2, line 3) …………………..………...…………………………………………………………………………….…

smacked (paragraph 3, line 8) …………..……..…………………………………………………………………………………………………

shattered (paragraph 3, line 9) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....…

Marks obtained
shudder (paragraph 3, line 13) ……………………………………………………………………………………………….………….......…

tourniquets (paragraph 5, line 25) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Remarks
marvels (paragraph 5, line 29) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

premeditated (paragraph 6, line 32) ………………………………………………………………………….………………………………..

wreckage (paragraph 8, line 46) ……………………………………………………………………….…………………………………….[5]

A. Mannan Shafik// O/A Level English. Phone: 01713 043858; 01613 043858; 01973 043858