Korean medicine looks toward Russia

A Korean practitioner of traditional Oriental medicine performs acupuncture on the neck of an Uzbekistan patient in this photo taken in Tashkent in December 2012. The Central Asian country is considering introducing traditional Oriental medicine to improve its public healthcare services. / Courtesy of AKOM

Practitioners pressed to beat domestic doldrums, says lobby group

Kim Pil-gun, president of the Association of Korean Medicine

By Park Si-soo

Confidence, boldness or sometimes sheer recklessness has driven a number of domestic players into overseas markets.

But for licensed practitioners of traditional Korean medicine here, it’s less of those three and more of desperation as they pursue globalization.

Leading the pursuit is the Association of Korean Medicine (AKOM), an umbrella group of some 20,000 licensed practitioners of traditional Korean medicine.

The demand for Korean version of Oriental medicine has been on the rise in Russia, Slovakia and other Central Asian countries. This growing overseas demand is a rare opportunity that the AKOM is seizing to tackle a daunting and decades-old problem at home.

“The globalization project will prove how competitive our traditional medicine is. At the same time, it will show how unfair the domestic law is (for traditional medicine) and how much our work is underestimated in Korea,” said Kim Pil-gun, AKOM president, in a recent interview with The Korea Times at the association’s headquarters in Gangseo-gu, northwestern Seoul.

In December, Russian politicians and bureaucrats met Kim and other AKOM officials in Seoul to discuss a variety of issues including exploring the possibility of opening a traditional medicine hospital in Russia. They also discussed ways to implement a training system for Russian medical students.

That same month, another group of Russian delegates, headed by the vice chief of the country’s social welfare agency, visited Seoul, seeking AKOM’s cooperation in treating Russian patients, and teaching Russian medical school students Oriental medicine and related techniques.

“Russia is very interested in Korean medicine because its medical effectiveness is as good as Western medicine, but available at a lower price,” Kim said.

“China is trying to export its traditional medicine to Russia, but the latter is reluctant to accept it due to a lack of creditability of Chinese licenses and the emotional rivalry between the two countries.”

Kim called on the government to take action to have the Korean license for traditional medicine doctors recognized in Russia so that they can formally enter the country of 140 million people.

“This is a win-win game,” he said. “The license’s recognition, if realized, will lead to a sharp improvement of Russian public healthcare services by Korean traditional medicine doctors. At the same time, we will be able to garner clinical data in Russia and other countries, with which we will be able to convince the government to remove regulatory discrimination against traditional doctors.”

In October, Kim travelled to Slovakia and signed an agreement with an academy specializing in alternative medicine to run academic exchange programs.

“Because Slovakia is a member state of the European Union, the agreement will make it easier for our traditional medicine to be promoted in other European countries, especially Slovakia’s neighbors, such as Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic.”

In 2011, the Korean government announced measures to boost the traditional medicine industry, under which it plans to invest one trillion won by 2015 to transform it into a 10 trillion won market. The market was valued at 7.4 trillion won as of 2009, the latest data available, according to the health ministry.

The global demand for complementary and alternative medical services was estimated at $200 billion as of 2008 and is expected to rise to $5 trillion by 2050.

The government is also working to ensure that the World Health Organization recognizes the efficiency of traditional medical treatment.

In the latest achievement, Korea’s traditional medicine doctor duo — Kim Ji-man and Kwon Seung-won — proved that drinking a liquefied herbal medicine in the traditional way, called “Bojungikki-tang,” is helpful in treating chronic pelvic pain syndrome. The results of their study were published in the Journal of Alternative and Integrative Medicine in January.

Hurdles in domestic laws

“Rules are unfair above all,” Kim said. “As is the case with Western medical doctors, our members earned their medical licenses after mastering subjects required to diagnose and treat patients. But because of the lopsided law, we are treated differently from Western medical doctors in many ways.”

Under the Medical Act enacted in 1955, Western medicine doctors have the exclusive right to use X-ray, CT, MRI or other state-of-the-art devices to diagnose and treat patients. Korean medicine doctors have failed to revise the law due to strong opposition from politically powerful Western medicine doctors.

“If the exclusive rights were given to them because all the theories applied to such devices have their roots in Western medicine and related technologies, it would be fair for the law to give Korean medicine doctors the exclusive right to use all sorts of traditional ways of treating patients. But here is the irony: there are some medical herbs that can be used exclusively by Western medicine doctors,” Kim said.

In March last year, the Constitutional Court rejected a petition a traditional medicine doctor filed to challenge a clause regarding the use of high-end medical devices. The court said that: “Such devices operate on theories of Western medicine. So it’s considered appropriate to give Western medicine doctors the exclusive right to use them.”

The AKOM chief said another major challenge lies with the public health insurance that offers a more limited coverage for traditional medicine services, compared with that of Western medicine services, resulting in a constant decline of demand for the former services.

Elected to lead the AKOM last April, Kim pledged in his New Year’s address that the association’s top priority for the year is to globalize Korean medicine. The Ministry of Health and Welfare has allocated 500 million won ($469,000) to support this project, the first ever state subsidy of its kind.

A task force will be set up at the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine to draw up a master plan for the project, including target countries and strategies, during the first half of the year, according to Kwak Sook-young, a director general of the health ministry’s bureau of traditional Korean medicine.