A US husband and wife who sheltered 10 South Korean travelers in their home during a deadly snowstorm last Christmas have gone to Seoul and been feted as heroes.
Alexander and Andrea Campagna went to South Korea’s capital as part of a 10-day tour of the city organized as a token of gratitude for the husband and wife who opened up their home in Buffalo, New York, to strangers in need.
“To see everyone in Korea again is such a blessing,” Andrea Campagna, 43, told reporters in Seoul in reference to those whom she and her husband aided. “They ended up in the right place at the right time. Now we have people we can call friends for a lifetime.”
The 23 December blizzard that brought together the Campagnas and their newfound Korean friends was brutal. Officials said more than 22in of snow fell in Buffalo that day, and 40 people died for reasons linked to the blizzard, which New York governor Kathy Hochul memorably described as “a war with Mother Nature”.
“We’ve had snowstorms, but not to that extent,” Alexander Campagna said in Seoul, according to the Korea Herald. “We knew we were going to be stuck at home for many days.”
As they prepared to be locked down for a while, the couple suddenly heard a knock on their door. They opened the door puzzled as to “who would be outside in this weather”, said Alexander Campagna, 40, a dentist.
The Campagnas were greeted by Scott Park and a tour guide who asked them if they could borrow shovels to dig their bus out from under the snowfall.
But, as the Korea Herald noted, the couple thought the visitors had as much of a chance to do that as they would taking water out of the ocean. So they invited the group in for tea, coffee, warm socks and blankets.
To the Campagnas, it looked like their guests believed they would be able to leave after a cup of tea. “But it was impossible to get anywhere in that weather, and it was going to be time for dinner soon,” Alexander Campagna said.
The Herald recounted how Park’s wife cooked Korean dishes such as jeyuk bokkeum – spicy marinated and stir-fried pork – and dak-dori-tang, a spicy chicken stew, that everyone shared.
According to the Herald, Park recalled the relief he felt when he realized the Campagnas had a proper rice cooker and the necessary ingredients, saying: “It was as if they had prepared this for us.”
The visitors stayed at the Campagnas’ the rest of that day – a Friday – and through the remainder of the weekend before the storm passed and the group returned to South Korea, in scenes that seemed straight out of a saccharine holiday movie.
The story went viral after US media reported on it. More recently, the Korea Tourism Organization provided to the Campagnas a 10-day, all-expenses-paid tour of Seoul as a reward for their hospitality.
On Thursday, about a week into the trip, the Campagnas went sightseeing at some of Seoul’s most storied places, including Gyeongbokgung, a 14th-century palace with painted wood beams and curved roofs, the New York Times reported.
They dined at Michelin-recommended restaurants, visited a Buddhist temple and traveled to the demilitarized zone that divides South Korea from its northern counterpart. They also met up with six of the once-stranded tourists they had sheltered last year, though this time the setting was “a sun-filled restaurant in a traditional Korean house overlooking Changdeokgung Palace”, as the Times put it.
Andrea Campagna, a surgical nurse practitioner, said her and her husband’s story was only one of many neighborly good deeds done by Buffalo residents as the community fought to survive the blizzard. But she acknowledged it was a special story nonetheless.
“They endured the horrible storm with us,” she told the Korea Herald of their Christmastime guests. “When you spend time together in a disaster situation, you feel very bonded.”