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Series to shed light on medical pioneers

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Yoo Myung-chul

Noh Dong-young

By Jung Min-ho

Starting next week, The Korea Times will publish a series of interview stories to highlight pioneers of the nation’s modern healthcare industry.

Korea’s healthcare sector is one of its fastest growing industries and it has a promising future.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of medical tourists soared from 60,201 in 2009 to 211,218 in 2013. Revenue jumped from 54.7 billion won ($46.2 million) to 393.4 billion won during that period. The government aims to raise the number of medical tourists to 1 million by 2020.

Yet, how the industry evolved to what it is today after the devastating Korean War in the early 1950s is barely known.

The series is designed to delve into who planted the seeds that helped Korea’s healthcare industry grow into one of the world’s finest. It is also to inspire anyone who believes the future of Korea’s healthcare sector will be much bigger than it is now.

The first person to be featured will be Yoo Myung-chul, former president of Kyung Hee University Medical Center in Seoul, where he started a new era in the field of Korea’s orthopedics and beyond as a surgical pioneer.

The second will be Park Chang-il, director of Konyang University Hospital in Daejeon. He was a former orthopedic surgeon who changed his career path to dedicate himself to nurturing rehabilitative medicine, when no one here even knew what that was.

Noh Dong-young, former chief of Seoul National University Cancer Hospital, contributed not only to developing techniques for breast cancer treatment but also to raising public awareness of the disease. He is also known for changing the authoritative hospital culture in terms of patient-physician relationships.

Kim Seung-ho, the founder and CEO of Boryung Pharmaceutical Company, was one of the early trailblazers in the pharmaceutical industry, which now aspires to lead the global market with drugs that the world has not yet seen.

The interview stories will be published every Monday.