지구 반 바퀴를 건너온 ‘사랑의 기적’…페루 자선사업가, 서울아산병원서 생체간이식으로 새 삶 얻다
일평생 조국 페루의 소외된 계층과 아픔을 겪는 이들을 위해 온 마음을 다해 봉사하며 살아온 미국인 자선사업가 마르코 안토니오 키로스(69) 씨. 그의 삶은 나눔과 헌신 그 자체였다.
미국과 페루를 오가며 부동산 건설 사업을 펼쳐 얻은 수익을 바탕으로 양로원의 노인들, 저소득층 가정, 그리고 투병 중인 환아들에 이르기까지 손길이 닿지 않는 곳이 없을 정도로 아낌없는 후원을 베풀어 왔다. 하지만 다른 이들에게 생명과 희망을 나누어주던 그에게 문득 청천벽력 같은 시련이 찾아왔다. 지난 2008년 페루에서 담낭(쓸개) 제거 수술을 받던 중 우연히 지방간 소견이 발견된 것이다.
당시 평소 술과 담배를 전혀 하지 않던 그였기에 의사는 유전적 소인일 것이라 진단했고, 미국 주치의 역시 아직 심각한 수준은 아니라고 하여 별다른 치료 없이 일상으로 돌아갔다. 그렇게 십여 년의 세월이 흘러 2025년 9월, 마르코 씨는 배가 계속 불러오는 이상 증세를 느껴 페루의 병원을 찾았다.
진단 결과는 가혹했다. 배에 물이 차는 복수 증상과 함께 지방간은 이미 간섬유화로 진행되어 있었다. 이어 올해 2월에는 숨쉬기조차 힘들어질 정도로 상태가 악화되어 다시 병원을 찾았고, 복수가 극심해지고 폐에 체액이 축적되었으며 간 조직이 딱딱하게 굳어가는 말기 ‘간경화’ 판정을 받았다. 간이식 외에는 더 이상 살아갈 방법이 없었다. 이대로 방치할 경우 신장까지 망가질 위험이 컸다.
그러나 페루의 의료 체계에서 간이식 가능 연령은 65세까지로 제한되어 있어 69세인 마르코 씨는 수술 대상에서 원천 배제되었다. 미국에서는 수술 자체가 불가능한 것은 아니었으나, 뇌사자간이식 대기자 명단에 오른 채 기약 없는 1년 이상의 기다림을 견뎌야만 했다. 누군가의 죽음만을 기다려야 한다는 사실은 남을 위해 평생을 헌신해 온 마르코 씨의 마음에 깊은 고통과 절망을 안겼다.
모든 것이 무너져 내리는 듯했던 그때, 마르코 씨는 지푸라기라도 잡는 심정으로 직접 인터넷 검색창에 손을 얹었다. 그리고 그곳에서 ‘생체간이식’이라는 새로운 치료 수법이 있다는 사실을 처음으로 알게 됐다. 전 세계의 의료 정보를 깊이 있게 탐색해 나갈수록, 생체간이식을 가장 안전하고 성공적으로 시행하는 나라와 병원이 선명하게 추려졌다. 그리고 마침내 도달한 최종 목적지는 단 한 곳, 바로 대한민국 서울의 ‘서울아산병원’이었다.
서울아산병원은 1992년 첫 간이식을 성공시킨 이후, 2025년 초 단일 의료기관으로는 세계 최초로 간이식 9,000례를 달성했으며 연간 수술 건수도 500례에 달하는 명실상부한 세계 최고의 의료 기관이다. 특히 생체간이식 분야에서는 기증자 사망률 0%라는 타의 추종을 불허하는 경이로운 기록을 보유하고 있었다. ‘최고의 의사들이 한국에 있고, 나의 선택지는 오직 한국뿐이다’라는 확신을 품은 마르코 씨는 지난 5월 말, 가족들과 함께 1만킬로미터를 가로지르는 비행길에 올랐다. 5월 28일 서울아산병원에 도착해 첫 진료를 마친 그는 자녀들과 함께 병원에 입원했고, 성공적인 수술을 위한 일련의 정밀 검사들에 돌입했다.
엄격하고 면밀한 검사 끝에 마르코 씨에게 가장 소중한 선물이 결정됐다. 바로 딸인 킴벌리 루시아 키로스(30) 씨가 아버지에게 자신의 간을 내어주기로 한 것이다. 의료진은 딸의 흔들림 없는 강한 기증 의지와 함께 부녀의 체격 조건 및 건강 상태를 종합적으로 검토했을 때 아버지에게 이식할 충분한 간 용적이 확보된다고 판단했다. 마침내 운명의 날인 8월 14일 오전 8시, 두 개의 수술실에 환하게 불이 켜지며 부녀는 나란히 수술대에 올랐다.
킴벌리 씨의 기증자 간절제 수술은 간이식·간담도외과 송기원 교수가 집도했다. 의료진은 킴벌리 씨의 간 우엽을 복부에 10cm 미만의 작은 절개만 남기는 ‘최소 절개 기법’으로 적출해 젊은 딸의 몸에 남을 흉터와 합병증의 위험을 최소한으로 낮췄다. 이어 마르코 씨의 본격적인 간이식 수술은 간이식·간담도외과 이승규 석좌교수와 문덕복 교수가 맡아 진행했다. 하지만 환자의 간 상태는 의료진의 예상보다 훨씬 더 심각했다. 오랫동안 진행된 간경화로 인해 간 혈관의 압력이 극도로 높아져 있었고, 혈관 주변에는 거미줄처럼 핏줄(해면상 혈관종)이 흉측하게 엉켜 있었다. 설상가상으로 딱딱하게 굳어진 간의 일부가 인체 내 가장 큰 정맥인 하대정맥을 완전히 감싸고 있는 형국이었다. 만약 자칫 잘못하여 간을 떼어내려다간 다른 장기로 가는 혈액순환이 완전히 정체되어 소장, 신장, 췌장 등 생명 유지에 필수적인 장기들이 순식간에 부어오르는 치명적인 위험이 도사리고 있었다.
이 거대한 위기를 극복하기 위해 이승규 석좌교수는 일차적으로 복잡하게 얽힌 혈관을 정교하게 분리해낸 뒤, 피가 안전하게 우회하여 순환할 수 있도록 인공 길을 만들어주는 우회술을 선제적으로 시행했다. 뒤이어 문덕복 교수가 굵고 위험한 혈관들 속에서 굳어진 간을 안전하게 박리해 떼어냈고, 건강하고 새로운 혈관을 찾아 딸의 간을 완벽하게 이어 붙였다. 이른 아침에 시작되어 무려 17시간 동안 피와 땀방울이 이어진 대수술은 마침내 대성공으로 막을 내렸다.
수술 후 부녀는 놀라운 회복력을 보여주었다. 딸 킴벌리 씨는 수술 후 8일 만에 가벼운 발걸음으로 먼저 퇴원했고, 아버지 마르코 씨 역시 의료진의 헌신적인 케어 속에 순조롭게 건강을 회복해 수술 후 3주 차에 당당히 병원 문을 나섰다.
이승규 석좌교수는 “최근 모로코에서 온 두 형제가 간암을 앓던 아버지를 모시고 한국을 찾아와 건강을 되찾은 데 이어, 이번에는 페루 출신 미국인 부녀가 한국의 선진 의료 기술 덕분에 고귀한 생명을 얻었다”라며 “서울아산병원이 동서고금을 막론하고 절체절명의 위기에 놓인 말기간부전 및 간암 환자들이 마지막 희망을 품고 찾는 종착지가 되었다는 점에서 무거운 책임감을 느낀다. 앞으로도 전 세계의 환자들이 이곳에서 새 삶을 이어갈 수 있도록 최선을 다하겠다”고 포부를 밝혔다.
문덕복 교수는 “환자의 굳어진 간이 대정맥을 단단히 감싸고 있어 수술 과정이 장시간 소요되었고 대량 출혈 및 공기색전증의 위험이 컸으나, 문맥-대정맥 우회로를 사전에 철저히 구축한 덕분에 무사히 이겨낼 수 있었다”며 “환자가 힘든 고비를 무사히 넘긴 만큼 고국으로 돌아가서도 오랜 기간 건강을 잘 유지하기를 진심으로 소망한다”고 전했다.
퇴원을 앞두고 마르코 씨는 벅차오르는 감정을 감추지 못했다. “올해 초 폐까지 물이 차오르며 숨조차 제대로 쉴 수 없을 때는 내 인생이 여기서 끝나는 줄 알았습니다. 실낱같은 희망만을 품고 지구 반 바퀴를 돌아 찾아온 낯선 땅 한국에서, 난생처음 경험하는 기적 같은 생명의 선물을 받았습니다. 제 조국 페루에는 여전히 고통받는 가난한 사람들이 많고, 아직 제가 세상에 베풀어야 할 일들이 산더미처럼 남아 있습니다. 이렇게 다시 숨 쉬고 봉사할 수 있는 소중한 기회를 얻게 되어 무척이나 행복합니다. 한국에서 얻은 이 뜨겁고 새로운 생명으로, 조국의 더 많은 어려운 이웃들을 힘껏 어루만지며 살아가겠습니다.”
딸의 헌신적인 사랑과 대한민국 최고의 의료진이 이뤄낸 17시간의 기적. 마르코 씨 부녀는 모든 외래 진료와 최종 검사를 마무리한 뒤, 29일(목) 따뜻한 온기가 가득 담긴 한국의 기억을 안고 사랑의 나라 미국과 페루를 향해 감격의 귀국길에 오른다.
*아래 글은 외국인 독자를 위해 영어로 번역한 내용입니다.
A Journey Halfway Around the World for a Second Chance at Life: A Daughter’s Gift Saves Her Father in South Korea
At 69, a Peruvian-American philanthropist who spent his life helping the vulnerable faced a devastating diagnosis. A 17-hour liver transplant, made possible by his daughter and a team of South Korean surgeons, gave him a chance to return to the people who still needed him.
“There is still so much left for me to do for the people of my country who have been forgotten.”
For much of his life, Marco Antonio Quiros, 69, had devoted himself to people who had little reason to expect help from anyone else.
A philanthropist and businessman who divided his time between the United States and Peru, he used the proceeds from his real estate and construction ventures to support elderly people in nursing homes, low-income families and children battling serious illnesses. Wherever suffering went unanswered, he tried to offer a helping hand.
Giving had become the defining purpose of his life. Then, in an unexpected turn, he found himself in desperate need of the very thing he had spent decades offering others: a chance.
His ordeal began in 2008, when he underwent gallbladder surgery in Peru. During the procedure, doctors discovered signs of fatty liver disease. Because he neither drank alcohol nor smoked, his doctors suspected a genetic predisposition. His physician in the United States did not consider the condition severe enough to require immediate treatment, and Quiros returned to his ordinary life.
For years, there was little to suggest how dramatically his health would deteriorate.
Then, in September 2025, he noticed that his abdomen was growing increasingly swollen. A visit to a hospital in Peru revealed that fluid was accumulating in his abdomen, a condition known as ascites, and that his fatty liver disease had progressed to liver fibrosis.
By February 2026, his condition had worsened considerably. Breathing had become difficult. Fluid had accumulated not only in his abdomen but also around his lungs, and his liver had hardened from years of progressive damage. Doctors diagnosed him with end-stage cirrhosis.
Without a liver transplant, there was little hope of survival. His failing liver also placed his kidneys at serious risk.
For a man who had spent his life trying to ease the suffering of others, the prospect of losing his own life was devastating. Yet the obstacles to treatment seemed insurmountable.
In Peru, liver transplantation was restricted by an age limit of 65, leaving Quiros, at 69, ineligible for the procedure. In the United States, a transplant was technically possible, but he faced the prospect of waiting more than a year on the list for a deceased-donor liver, with no guarantee that an organ would become available in time.
The thought of waiting for someone else to die before he could live was a particularly painful one.
Then, in the midst of his despair, Quiros began searching the internet for another way forward.
That was when he discovered living-donor liver transplantation, a procedure in which a healthy person donates a portion of the liver to someone whose own liver can no longer function. Because the liver can regenerate, both donor and recipient can recover after the operation.
The more he researched his options, the more convinced he became that South Korea offered the expertise and experience he needed.
His search led him to Asan Medical Center in Seoul, a hospital internationally recognized for its liver transplantation program.
Since performing its first liver transplant in 1992, the hospital has steadily expanded its experience in one of the most demanding fields of surgery. In early 2025, it became the first medical institution in the world to perform 9,000 liver transplants. It now carries out approximately 500 such operations annually.
Its experience with living-donor transplantation was especially important to Quiros. The hospital reported a donor mortality rate of zero percent in its living-donor liver transplant program.
For Quiros, the decision became clear.
“The best doctors were in Korea,” he came to believe. “Korea was my only option.”
At the end of May, he and his family boarded a flight that carried them roughly 10,000 kilometers to Seoul. He arrived at Asan Medical Center on May 28 and began a series of detailed examinations to determine whether a transplant could be performed safely.
The answer, ultimately, would come from within his own family.
His daughter, Kimberly Lucia Quiros, 30, volunteered to donate a portion of her liver to save her father.
The medical team carefully assessed her health, her willingness to donate and the physical compatibility between father and daughter. After reviewing their respective conditions and calculating the volume of liver that could be safely transplanted, the doctors determined that her donation could provide her father with sufficient liver tissue.
On the morning of Aug. 14, at 8 a.m., two operating rooms came to life. Father and daughter were wheeled in for separate but intimately connected operations.
One would give a portion of her liver. The other would receive it.
A Daughter’s Gift, and a Surgeon’s Race Against Time
Kimberly’s donor operation was led by Song Ki-won, a professor of liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery at Asan Medical Center.
The surgical team removed the right lobe of her liver using a minimally invasive technique that required an abdominal incision of less than 10 centimeters. The approach was intended to reduce the size of the scar and minimize the risk of complications for the young donor.
Her father’s operation, however, proved far more complicated than anticipated.
The transplant was led by Lee Seung-gyu, an endowed professor, and Moon Deok-bok, both specialists in liver transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery.
Years of cirrhosis had severely altered the anatomy of Quiros’s liver and the blood vessels surrounding it. Pressure within the liver’s blood vessels had risen dramatically, and a dense network of abnormal collateral vessels had developed around them. These fragile vessels had become tangled in a web that made the operation particularly hazardous.
There was another, potentially fatal complication: part of his hardened liver had grown tightly around the inferior vena cava, the body‘s largest vein, which returns blood from the lower body to the heart.
Removing the diseased liver without first addressing this obstruction could have interrupted blood flow to vital organs. The resulting congestion and swelling could have threatened the intestines, kidneys and pancreas, turning an already difficult transplant into a life-threatening emergency.
The surgeons faced a problem that demanded not only technical precision but careful planning.
Lee first worked to separate the complicated network of blood vessels. The team then established a bypass route to allow blood to continue circulating safely while the diseased liver was removed.
Only after this alternative pathway had been secured could Moon carefully dissect the hardened liver from the surrounding vessels. The surgeons then connected Kimberly’s donated liver to the appropriate blood vessels, restoring the circulation needed for the transplanted organ to function.
The operation had begun early that morning. Seventeen hours later, after an extraordinary test of surgical skill and endurance, the transplant was complete.
It had succeeded.
For Quiros, the outcome meant far more than the replacement of a failing organ. It meant the possibility of returning to a life he had feared was slipping away — and to the people he believed were still counting on him.
Recovery, and the Work That Still Lies Ahead
Father and daughter began recovering after surgery.
Kimberly was discharged eight days later. Her father’s recovery took longer, as expected after such a complex procedure, but he continued to improve under the care of the hospital’s medical team.
Three weeks after the operation, Quiros was well enough to leave the hospital.
For the surgeons, the case illustrated both the possibilities of living-donor liver transplantation and the formidable challenges that can accompany advanced liver disease.
Lee said the hospital had recently treated two brothers who traveled from Morocco with their father, who had liver cancer, seeking treatment in South Korea. The successful operation for Quiros and his daughter represented another instance in which patients from far beyond the country’s borders had turned to Korean medicine in a moment of extreme vulnerability.
“Asan Medical Center has become a destination of last hope for patients around the world facing end-stage liver failure or liver cancer,” Lee said. “That recognition carries a profound responsibility. We will continue to do everything we can to help patients from across the world find a new chance at life here.”
Moon said the operation had required an unusually long time because the hardened liver was tightly wrapped around the inferior vena cava.
“The risks of massive bleeding and air embolism were considerable,” he said. “But we were able to overcome these challenges because we had carefully established a portal vein-to-vena cava bypass route in advance.”
He added that he sincerely hoped Quiros would continue to enjoy good health after returning home.
“I Thought My Life Was Coming to an End”
As his discharge approached, Quiros struggled to put his gratitude into words.
Earlier in the year, when fluid had accumulated around his lungs and he could barely breathe, he had believed his life was nearing its end. The journey to South Korea had begun as a desperate search for a possibility that seemed increasingly remote.
Instead, it had brought him back from the brink.
“At the beginning of this year, when fluid was building up in my lungs and I could hardly breathe, I thought my life was coming to an end,” he said.
“With only the faintest hope left, I traveled halfway around the world to a country that was unfamiliar to me. Here in Korea, I received what feels like a miraculous gift of life.”
For Quiros, however, survival was not the end of the story.
His thoughts had already turned to Peru, where the elderly, poor families and sick children he had supported for years continued to face hardship.
“There are still so many people in my country who are suffering in poverty, and there is so much more I have to do for the world,” he said.
“I am deeply happy to have been given this precious opportunity to breathe again and continue serving others. With this new life I have received in Korea, and with all the strength I have, I will return to caring for the many people in my country who need help.”
His words gave the operation a meaning beyond its medical success.
A daughter had given her father a portion of her own liver. Surgeons had spent 17 hours navigating some of the most dangerous complications of advanced liver disease. And a man who had spent decades giving others hope had been given the chance to carry on.
For Quiros, the gift of life was inseparable from the work that still lay ahead.
After completing his remaining outpatient appointments and final examinations, he was scheduled to return to the United States on Thursday, Aug. 29, carrying memories of a country he had crossed an ocean to reach — and the possibility of returning to Peru to continue the work that had defined his life.