Seoul doctor marks 53 years of free medical service at Joseph Clinic

Ko Young-cho, director of Joseph Clinic, speaks during an interview in his office at the clinic in Yongsan District, Seoul, April 28. Korea Times photo by Yun Gi-hun

By Hankookilbo

• Published May 13, 2026 12:10 AM KST

At Joseph Clinic, Ko Young-cho treats homeless patients, impoverished residents and migrants who struggle to use general hospitals

Dr. Ko Young-cho climbed a narrow staircase in central Seoul’s Yongsan District, barely wide enough for one person. The walls blocked the sunlight, and the air smelled heavily of dampness. Ko, 73, moved up the steep steps with an old medical bag over his shoulder.

Inside a cramped shack where empty soju bottles lay on the floor, Ko wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the arm of a 55-year-old man surnamed Ji, who struggles with severe alcoholism.

"Your blood pressure is still high," Ko said. "I won’t tell you to stop drinking right away. Until I come next time, let’s try cutting it down to just one bottle a week."

"I still think about drinking, but thanks to you, doctor, I’m better than before," Ji said, looking embarrassed.

Ko held his hand. It was a small gesture, but for a man in a room few outsiders enter, it meant he had not been abandoned.

Ko has spent 53 years providing medical care to people living at the edge of society. He began as a first-year medical student carrying heavy medicine boxes into hillside shantytowns. He is now an elderly doctor, but still serves Seoul's "jjokbangchon," or neighborhoods of tiny, low-cost rooms often occupied by people in deep poverty.

Free care for those with nowhere else to go

At Joseph Clinic near Seoul Station in central Seoul, treatment costs nothing. Consultation, medicine and medical supplies come free of charge. The clinic has become part of Korea’s health care safety net for people who have no insurance, cannot afford treatment or struggle to use general hospitals.

Joseph Clinic opened in 1987, when the late Sunwoo Kyung-sik founded it in a poor neighborhood in Sillim-dong, southern Seoul. The clinic later became known as a place for patients who could not easily access standard medical care. Its patients include jjokbangchon residents, homeless people who lost health insurance coverage after falling behind on premiums, migrants without legal status and others pushed outside regular care.

A notice at the entrance asks people enrolled in health insurance to use other hospitals. In practice, the sign also tells those without coverage that Joseph Clinic is a place for them, as it welcomes patients who often feel unwelcome elsewhere.

Ko is the clinic’s fifth director and its only full-time doctor. Around 130 volunteer doctors rotate through 15 departments, including internal medicine, surgery, neurosurgery and psychiatry.

More than 100 patients visit each day. Many have chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes. Others suffer from liver or gastrointestinal illnesses linked to heavy drinking. Patients with schizophrenia, depression and severe alcoholism also come frequently.

Ko does not wait for every patient to come to him. He makes house calls and meets patients where they live. That is why Joseph Clinic chose the Seoul Station area as its third base after southwestern Seoul. Dongja-dong and other jjokbangchon areas in central Seoul have about 3,000 residents, about 10 times as many as western Seoul.

"Some people ask whether a hospital like this is still necessary when the welfare system has improved," Ko said. "But things feel different on the ground. The sad reality is that people in difficult situations are reluctant to go to general hospitals, and hospitals do not welcome them either."

For Ko, those patients fall through the cracks of the social safety net despite wider public coverage.

Choosing medicine over path to priesthood

Ko had not always planned to become a doctor. Born into a Catholic family, he once dreamed of becoming a priest and attended a seminary. He later changed course because he saw a connection between the calling of a priest who heals souls and that of a doctor who heals bodies. In his final year of high school, he transferred to a regular school and went on to medical school.

In 1973, when he began his medical coursework, Ko started volunteering in places such as Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, where people displaced from Seoul's Cheonggye Stream during urban redevelopment had settled.

"It was a time when there was no national health insurance," he said. "Because the villages were remote, I got off the bus and walked while carrying a heavy medical box filled with surgical instruments. Rope marks remained on my hands, but even that did not feel hard. From then on, service was my calling."

He kept that calling after graduation. While working in neurosurgery at Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital and Konkuk University Medical Center, he volunteered at Joseph Clinic, Jeon Jin Sang Clinic and Welfare Center — which opened at the request of Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan — and Raphael Clinic, which serves migrant workers.

Over the decades, Ko has treated more than 30,000 patients.

In his long service, there is one episode he still looks back on with regret. One day, a homeless patient came to him complaining of knee pain. Ko assumed the problem was a spinal disc issue and prescribed medicine. He should have asked the patient to undress for a full physical examination and checked muscle strength, sensation and reflexes. But the patient’s clothes were stained with urine and feces, and Ko did not complete the examination as he should have.

When the patient returned a month later, his symptoms had worsened. Ko later heard a Bible verse during Mass that struck him deeply. The verse read, "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." It is from Matthew 25:40, where Jesus identifies himself with the vulnerable, poor and marginalized, teaching that service to them is equivalent to serving him. It felt like a knife in his heart, Ko recalled. He gathered himself, examined the patient again and found a spinal cord tumor.

"After that day, I came to examine every patient with all my heart, seeing each one as a small image of Jesus," Ko said.

The memory stayed with him. Ko said it taught him to examine every patient fully, regardless of how they looked, smelled or lived.

Heart keeps mission alive for half-century

Asked what has allowed him to practice medicine for decades without payment or reward, Ko answered without hesitation. It was his heart.

"What jjokbangchon residents and homeless people need more than medicine is encouragement," he said. "When you listen to their stories, their eyes change. I simply convey the heart that says, ‘We are by your side, so let’s try to live with just a little more strength.’"

That approach has produced quiet changes. Some people who once were soaked in alcohol started to live again. One patient who received free care saved crumpled bills from public assistance and secretly slipped them through a gap in the clinic door. Some patients returned because they trusted him.

Ko’s work has also drawn others into service. More than 50 fellow doctors followed him into free medical volunteering, earning him a reputation as a prolific recruiter of fellow doctors. His son, an ophthalmologist, accompanies him. During the mass walkout by trainee doctors in 2024, former students who had nowhere to go joined him in jjokbangchon outreach.

Joseph Clinic’s circle of support has widened considerably since its early years, when it had only dozens of donors. It now has more than 10,000 sponsors and more than 600 volunteers.

Recognition followed, though Ko has never treated it as a goal. He received a government honor through the National Recommendation Honors program in 2012, the LG Good Citizen Award in 2021 and the Medical Service Award at the Asan Awards in 2024. He donated the prize money to several hospitals where he had volunteered.

Ko said volunteering does not require grand sacrifices or patronizing charity. He sees it as a minimum duty for people who want to live together in a better world.

Ko still climbs the stairs because he believes care begins when someone shows up. For patients who rarely hear that anyone is on their side, that can be the first step back into society.

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.