John Alderman Linton

Linton was born in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, South Korea,[2][3] as the youngest of six children.[4] Linton's family has been in Jeolla for several generations; in 1895, his great-grandfather Eugene Bell came to the province as a Southern Presbyterian missionary.[2][3][4] His grandfather William Linton participated in the March 1st Movement in 1919.[2][4] Linton's parents also performed missionary work, and established a number of churches and schools in Korea.[2][3] Linton's father even served in the Korean War.[2]

Linton grew up in a missionary compound in Suncheon. He grew up speaking a mix of Korean and English; his Korean has been described as having a heavy Jeolla accent.[3][2][4] He attended the Taejon Christian International School as a teenager.[4]

In 1980, Linton was a first-year medical student at Yonsei University when the Gwangju Uprising occurred. Linton went from Seoul to Gwangju, and worked as a translator for foreign reporters. Within two weeks, he was summoned to the US Embassy with regards to a letter that described him as an instigator of the uprising. For years afterwards, he was carefully observed by the South Korean government.[3] He returned to school and became the first Westerner to pass the Korean Medical Licensing Examination.[2]

In 1991, he became the youngest director in history of Yonsei University's International Health Care Center. The following year, he helped introduce the first ambulences in South Korea. Before the introduction of ambulences, patients were transported in taxi-like cars. Linton was, in part, motivated to address this issue because of his own experience; his father had died in such a car in 1984, after being hit by a drunk driver. In 1993, he trained the country's first paramedic prehospital care team in his hometown of Suncheon. In 1995, he contributed to the development of an enhanced ambulence. Beginning in 1997, he began making medical aid trips to North Korea; he has since made 29 trips to the country, as of 2018.[3][4] In 2017, he treated Oh Chong-song, a North Korean soldier who defected to the South via the Korean Demilitarized Zone.[2]

Linton has become a public figure in South Korea. He met Kim Dae-jung in 1994 (who later became president),[3] and served as vice chairman of president elect Park Geun-hye's transition committee in 2012. That year, Linton also became the first adult to be granted South Korean citizenship, which he now holds alongside his American citizenship.[3] He has since become the progenitor of a Korean clan: the Suncheon Ihn clan.[2] In 2014, Linton was awarded the Order of Service Merit of Human Rights Award.[4] In 2019, Linton appeared on an episode of the variety show Master in the House.[2]

Linton is a Korean reunification activist, and has expressed support for providing further aid to North Korea.[4]

Linton published an autobiography in 2006, entitled My Hometown is Jeolla-do, My Soul is Korean (『내 고향은 전라도 내 영혼은 한국인』).[4]

• [대화의 희열 #4] 전라도 순천이 고향?! 한국의 위대한 역사를 함께한 시골 촌놈 인요한 | KBS 180929 방송 on YouTube – Linton being interviewed on a 2018 variety show (in Korean)