By Cho Jae-hyon
Staff Reporter
Dr. Raimund Royer has heard his friends say many times that he must have been a Korean in his previous life.
Royer, who leads the international clinic at Jaseng Hospital of Oriental Medicine in southern Seoul, is the first and only foreigner who has passed the state-run test to become a licensed traditional Korean medicine doctor.
His love of the traditional Korean medical world started about 20 years ago.
"It was a kind of accident. In 1987 when I first visited Korea as a tourist, I sprained my ankle. I was introduced to a small Korean medical clinic," Royer said in an interview with The Korea Times. "At that time, I was told acupuncture was the best treatment for a sprained ankle. And that was my first experience with Korean oriental medicine."
The pin quickly relieved his pain. "So I became interested in the practice and I later looked deeper into the field and finally started studying it."
Though Royer, from Austria, had interest in martial arts and other Korean and Asian culture, studying Oriental medicine was not easy.
He wanted to enroll at a Seoul-based university but the schools refused to admit him. In the past, the school had accepted some foreign students but none of them even finished the first year.
"They told me that foreigners cannot do this kind of study," he said.
But he did not give up and finally got a conditional approval from Daegu Haany University.
The conditions were that he must learn Korean first and have a basic knowledge of Chinese letters. He learned Korean at Yonsei University, and Chinese letters and philosophy at a university in Gangwon Province.
"Two years of preparations and then I was accepted in 1991," he said.
It took eight years for him to finish the normally six-year program because of strikes by Oriental medicine students in 1995 protesting a move to allowing pharmacists to practice and sell traditional herbal medicine.
He found the two premedical courses to be extremely difficult because there were too many difficult subjects. "But in the end I passed the national license exam. I was the first and the last so far. ... Hopefully, I will be not the last," he said.
Royer said that there's a growing awareness of Oriental medicine worldwide.
"It's an international trend. This complementary and alternative medicine is getting more popular," he said. "Acupuncture is popular in many countries and widely accepted. For instance, in Germany alone, there are about 30,000 to 50,000 medical doctors who use acupuncture."
Germany did in-depth studies about the effectiveness of acupuncture. The results were positive so they accepted it, he said.
However, according to Royer, acupuncture is known as Chinese medicine in other countries no matter how effective and competitive traditional Korean acupuncture is.
"Acupuncture is already a Chinese medicine. It's already a market that we lost," he said. "Korean medicine is not known. The biggest issue is how to let the world know about this medicine."
Therefore, Korea must develop in other fields. "What kinds of fields can we introduce as Korean medicine? There are several ways. For instance, we can introduce this integrated system of Western and Oriental medicine combined or treatments of special diseases, like spine problems," he said. "We also have constitutional medicine. That's a unique Korean medicine; it's not Chinese."
He said Korea must put a greater focus on globalizing herbal medicines as the Western world has already accepted acupuncture and the next step will be accepting herbal medicine. "What should be done to get or control this market? We have to find ways to introduce herbal medicine as a more Korean style. It's all about marketing and it's all about quality."
He said some "hanyak," traditional herbal medicines, are known as not being sanitary, containing heavy metals and other pollutants.
To make sure that hanyak will be free of contaminants, he said there has to be some organization that can prove the quality of the medicine not only for the international market but the Korean market as well.
"We should form a worldwide center not just a Korean center. Herbs that are controlled by this center can be trusted by the world," he said. "We have to give evidence to prove they are safe and effective. Only then can we promote the quality and safety of Korean medicine."
He pointed out that this kind of project should be initiated by the government.
"The most important factor is the mind. You really have to focus on something. Not something for the record. If we want to introduce Korean medicine to the world, we have to discover what we want to introduce," the doctor said.
Royer said international conferences should be held and international doctors should be invited to Korea to inform them of medicine and medical practices here.
"First we have to make something we can show them. It needs money. Everything is about money. If you don't have money, you can't do anything," he said. "If you want to build an institution, you need people, facilities. That is an investment. These kind of initial investments cannot be done by the private sector but need to be done by the government."
Using the example of the automobile industry, he said the government invested a lot of money in the initial years. After this, private companies followed. The same can be true for the medical industry, he said.
"We need a strategy and a long-term vision. Traditional herbal medicine is worth investing in. If we do it right, it's a huge market."
He said pharmaceutical companies and other private firms should be in charge of producing and marketing. It will allow people to buy and take the medicine more easily. "We need medication in a modern form. Not like a drink. Nobody wants to drink it,"he said.
He said the government's move to boost medical tour programs to attract foreign tourists is a step in the right direction.
"Medical tours are a good start. For instance, our hospital is one of the first hospitals taking part in the programs," he said.
Jaseng Hospital treated 5,800 cases involving foreigners last year, up 66 percent from a year earlier. Japanese patients accounted for 31 percent, Americans 12 percent and Germans 7 percent. More than 60 percent of foreign patients had problems in their backs or joints.
The hospital is known for treating spine ailments with acupuncture and herbal medicines, not with surgery.
He said receiving foreign patients who have not experienced traditional Korean medicine is time consuming.
"You have to explain what's going on, functional problems and all kinds of these basic traditional Korean medicine knowledge. It takes some time. If it's the first time, I have to explain everything," he said.
He said most of his patients are foreigners.
"I'm busy enough just from my foreign patients. But if Korean patients want to see me, they can," he said laughing.