Turned away in Europe, father finds 2nd chance in Korea through sons' gift

Mohamed El Kettani expresses his gratitude to Dr. Lee Sung-gyu, an endowed-chair professor of liver transplantation at Asan Medical Center, following his successful surgery at Asan Medical Center. Courtesy of Asan Medical Center

Mohamed El Kettani was running out of time.

Suffering from severe liver failure and an aggressive form of liver cancer that had invaded his portal vein, the 64-year-old Moroccan industrialist had been turned away by top medical centers in Europe. French doctors concluded that a deceased-donor transplant was no longer an option and removed him from the waiting list.

Faced with a fatal prognosis, his sons refused to accept the verdict. Omar El Kettani, a 30-year-old cardiac surgeon practicing in France, teamed up with his older brother, Hicham, 33, to comb through medical literature from leading transplant institutes across the globe.

Their search led to an unexpected destination: Asan Medical Center in Seoul.

In May, after a 10,000-kilometer journey from Morocco, three operating rooms lit up simultaneously at the Seoul hospital. In a grueling 17-hour procedure, a surgical team harvested portions of both sons' livers and transplanted them into their father. The rare, high-stakes, dual living-donor operation gave El Kettani a second chance at life.

"Father, you have to come to Korea with us," Omar recalled telling his hesitant parent. "It is the only way you can survive."

Korea has quietly emerged as a global powerhouse in organ transplantation, particularly in living-donor procedures. While Western medical systems rely heavily on organs from deceased donors, severe shortages have pushed Asian medical centers to pioneer living-donor techniques.

Since performing its first liver transplant in 1992, Asan Medical Center has completed over 9,000 procedures, averaging roughly 400 living-donor transplants annually. By comparison, leading Western institutions like the Cleveland Clinic or major French centers perform about 30 such surgeries a year.

"The fact that this family traveled all the way from Morocco to Korea reflects the global recognition of our expertise," said Dr. Lee Sung-Gyu, an endowed-chair professor at Asan who pioneered dual living-donor liver transplants in 2000. Since then, the center has performed 664 such two-to-one transplants — the highest volume in the world.

Mohamed’s medical history was exceptionally complex.

Diagnosed with hepatitis C two decades ago while running a major oil refining business in Morocco, years of chronic inflammation had left 85 percent of his liver scarred. Though antiviral therapies cured the infection, his liver function steadily declined.

By late 2025, Mohamed, who holds dual French and Moroccan citizenship, sought treatment in France, where doctors discovered early-stage liver cancer. Initial targeted treatments failed to halt the disease. By February, a new 6-centimeter tumor had rapidly expanded into his liver's primary blood supply.

Living donation was his sole remaining hope. However, since he weighed nearly 135 kilograms, a single donor’s liver section would be too small to support his body's metabolic demands. It would take two donors.

Initial hurdles almost derailed the plan. Mohamed feared for his sons’ safety. His sons countered that Asan held a pristine safety record, with zero donor deaths following living liver donations. Furthermore, Omar’s blood type was incompatible with his father’s — a barrier Asan routinely bypasses through specialized desensitization protocols, having performed over 1,100 blood-type-incompatible transplants.

In the morning of May 22, nearly 30 medical professionals converged across three surgical suites. Surgeons removed Hicham's left liver lobe through a small incision under 10 centimeters, while Omar's right liver lobe was harvested using minimally invasive surgery to minimize scarring.

In the primary operating suite, Lee and his colleague, Moon Deok-bog, carefully removed Mohamed's diseased liver using a meticulous "no-touch" cancer technique to prevent malignant cells from spreading into the bloodstream. To fit both donated lobes into a crowded abdominal cavity, surgeons carefully repositioned the patient's right kidney and adrenal gland, securing the grafts into place.

By 2 a.m. the following morning, the marathon surgery was complete.

All three men have since recovered smoothly. The sons have returned to their routines, and Mohamed is preparing for discharge.

"I believe that medicine without compassion is nothing more than a business," the father said before leaving the hospital. "The team in Korea cared for me with genuine warmth and never gave up on saving my life."

For Omar, the experience left a lasting professional impression.

"As a surgeon practicing in France, I now hope to have the opportunity to train at Asan Medical Center someday," he said. "Above all, I am just grateful that I was able to give my father his health back."

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.