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Korea to foster telemedicine for post-pandemic era
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki, center, speaks during the first Emergency Economic Central Countermeasures Headquarters meeting at the Government Complex Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of Ministry of Economy and Finance
By Park Jae-hyuk
By Park Jae-hyuk
The government plans to abolish regulations that hinder telemedicine in order to turn the coronavirus crisis into an opportunity to foster industries that allow people to conduct contactless business, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Wednesday.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said at the first Emergency Economic Central Countermeasures Headquarters meeting that the government will focus more on sectors offering non-face-to-face services, such as telemedicine, distance learning and online businesses.
“The biggest obstacles to improving our economic structure for the post-corona era are regulations that were imposed for the interests and paradigms of the past,” he said.
In this regard, the government chose 65 tasks in 10 industry sectors suffering from outdated regulations.
The tasks include preemptive screening of innovative medical devices, more direct-to-consumer genetic testing and eased regulations on investments in fintech businesses.
Vice Finance Minister Kim Yong-beom told reporters after the meeting that the government hopes newly-elected lawmakers will revise laws to enable telemedicine in Korea.
“Telemedicine was restrictively allowed to cope with the coronavirus,” he said. “Among the 130,000 diagnoses, there wasn't any significant misdiagnosis, so many people realized the necessity of telemedicine.”
The government also said it will aggressively pursue the large-scale job creation project, which is called the “Korean New Deal.”
“Unlike large-scale constructions of the previous century, the Korean New Deal is the project to create new types of jobs related to digital transformation, Fourth Industrial Revolution and post-corona era,” Hong said. “A large-scale digital-based IT project using domestic technologies and workforce will be an example.”
In addition, the government announced the new 10 trillion won ($8.2 billion) relief program for small business owners facing financial difficulties from the pandemic.
“As social-distancing measures crippled offline retail sales, owners of small businesses have felt the brunt of the fallout from the coronavirus,” Hong said. “The government will encourage six commercial banks to give new relief loans to small business owners.”
This is the nation's second round of relief loans for small businesses.
The government, which had already come up with a 12 trillion won relief loans at 1.5 percent interest rates for small business owners, increased the size of the first relief loans to 16.4 trillion won to brace for excess demand.
“Beneficiaries of the first program will be excluded from the second program, to ensure as many as possible small business owners with lower credit scores can receive benefits,” Hong said.
According to the government, the central countermeasures headquarters which launched Wednesday will serve as the control tower to discuss countermeasures against the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The finance ministry said the vice minister will give briefings on results of the headquarters meetings every week.