Jeon Gyeong-cheol received news that would floor anyone: he had six months left to live.
In South Korea, instead of keeping that time for himself, he invested all of it in a single mission: ensuring that his son, an adult with severe autism, would have a safe place to live when he was no longer there. He documented the process publicly and earned a nickname that went viral, ‘Peter Pan Dad,’ because of the way he clung to protecting his son until the very end. On August 26, shortly before his death, he announced the launch of a preparatory committee to create a welfare foundation dedicated to adults with severe disabilities like his son’s.
A month before he died, he appeared on the program ‘You Quiz on the Block’ and said, without dramatics, that all he hoped was that his son would remember him fondly. Jeon is no longer here, but the committee he set up continues to push his project forward.
