Well, this is an ugly scene [KBS, Korean]—a bereaved family fighting with hospital staff and police in a hospital lobby over the body of a 14-year-old girl who had died on the operating table.
The girl had gone in for surgery to treat a broken arm caused by a benign tumor, but died during the operation. The family, believing the death was the result of hospital malpractice, brought the body to the hospital lobby, where they conducted a sit-down demonstration.
Hospital staff tried to remove the body from the lobby, ostensibly for an autopsy. The family would have none of it, resulting in a violent class with hospital security guards and a company of riot cops.
The hospital claimed it needed the body to determine the exact cause of death. The family, of course, claims it can’t trust the hospital.
At the moment, however, there are a ton of different stories on the incident, often differing in details, so it’s hard to get the straight dope, so to speak, on what exactly happened. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.
Anyway, according to that paragon of journalistic integrity, the Sports Chosun (Korean), the body was finally transported to the National Institute of Scientific Investigation over the objections of the family.
Thanks to the video, part of which you can see in the first link, this has become the biggest story in the Korean cybersphere at the moment—the KBS piece has 5,000 comments and counting.
UPDATE: Here’s the entire video (16:27):
Surreal.
78 Comments
Lord, that is so sad. The NIH should do a professional job figuring out what happened.
Can someone explain what’s with the guy stripping down to his undies? Is this normal protest behavior? Seems kinda of bizarre.
I don’t get the guy who stripped down to his undies. Anyone know what the deal is with that? I remember a picture of an exasperated ajjoshi standing naked in front of City Hall after Korea lost to the Swiss. Same thing in a few drunken scuffles on the street I’ve seen.
Lost
1 shirt, white
1 suit, black
1 sock, black
1 restraint, self
Reward offered.
Sadly, they are right not to trust the hospital. My daughter had a birth complication that simply was left of the the records to avoid liability. The doctor was clearly at fault.
Hospital staff: This is madness!
Family: Madness? This is KOREA!
[kicks the doctor into a deep kimchi pit]
Looks like the local dry cleaners will be busy martinizing all those suits.
Why didn’t the cops intervene?
What was the hospital staff trying to do? Were they trying to take possession of the body so that the hospital’s own pathologist could conduct an autopsy? Obviously, that would have been against the will of the girl’s family. Regardless of their motives, I’m certainly never going to go to that hospital.
TWC,
I could tell you a story about a certain young specialist who walked a fine line between vanity and medical malpractice when he gave me a bogus diagnosis (even got the medical wrong/made one up) just so he wouldn’t concur what I know I had. Apparently, it didn’t sit well with him that my wife told him to use medical terms with me instead of having her translating whatever he was saying in Korean to English…And when he tried to stump me, tried to show her wrong, I knew all the terminology (I studied science at university, learned to read from my dad’s biology books).
Correction: “concur with my own (which turned out to be correct)”
My girlfriend’s a doctor, in Bucheon, and so, while she’s unaffiliated with this hospital, she has been following the case with some interest. I’m not sure if she told me everything correctly, and of course some objective opinion is coloring what she’s told me, but what’s reported above does conflict with some of the facts that have been reported to date:
1. The girl didn’t die during the operation, but rather sometime during the night, while in the ICU. This is important because it means postoperative complications might be to blame, which is what the preliminary autopsy reports are now suggesting.
2. Operative complications and the possibility of death as a result of operation are always brought up. People disregard them as a matter of course, but any operation involving general anaesthetic always involve a chance of death by pulmonary thrombo-embolism — you run about a 0.03% chance of dying that way, but it happens. (That’s how my father died, by the way. It DOES happen.) Both the pre-autopsy and first reports on the autopsy suggest pulmonary thrombo-embolism as a cause of death.
The location of the operation and the absence of any experimental surgeries not requiring such anaesthetic mean that this was the only way to treat the condition, and that the risks of surgery were a necessary risk which unfortunately worked out badly for this girl.
3. The family was pissed off that the daughter died, and so held a demonstration in the lobby of the hospital with their dead daughter’s body as the main “display object”. That’s right, instead of just making placards and signs, they brought their dead daughter’s corpse to the demo. They also were banging gwaengari (cymbals) and chanting things like “Bring out the murderer!” Which leads to point #4.
4. Indeed, they reported the daughter’s death to the police as a murder, which meant that the police were called in to claim the body for investigation. Which spoiled the family’s big demo, of course, and probably was a relief to the hospital, with upcoming founding anniversary celebrations just around the corner.
5. The family has settled with the hospital for an undisclosed amount of money in addition to the cost of the treatment and the cost of the funeral. It would seem to me that if they truly believed their daughter was murdered, a settlement would be out of the question, which throws some doubt onto their motivations for demonstrating in such an extreme way in the first place. There’s compassion for the grieving, and then there’s way to damned far over the line. For an unfortunate death due to surgical complications, this looks way over the line.
6. The hospital has made precisely one admission of wrongdoing, which is this: they moved the time of the operation up by 45 minutes, which made it impossible for the patient to receive a visit from her family prior to the operation. This is a very big no-no, for reasons that should be apparent because of the outcome of this case, and the hospital has owned up to this fact.
7. The media frenzy has at least something to do with the popular distrust of doctors, which is at an all-time high. Some of this is due to encounters with incompetence such as in the case The Western Confucian, because of arrogance like Someguyinkorea encountered… and because the avarice of a number of doctors is readily apparent in their bedside manner. Don’t get me wrong, my girlfriend’s also spoken extensively to me about the problems she sees within the Korean medical community.
Yet the widespread social trend towards mistrust and denouncement of doctors as a class is generally unhelpful. Nobody’s calling for reforms, say for example reforms that make more experienced residents do more of the work in an E.R., or for reforms of a system governing prescriptions which was formulated by people who know nothing of the illnesses those drugs are used to treat.
It’s open season on doctors in the media and public opinion, and the good ones are either leaving the country (the Korean USMLE-related web-boards are quite lively) or taking cover in lower-risk fields. Meanwhile, the press is reporting tons of different versions of the story because it sells.
Finally, I’ve been to this hospital, and my experience was mixed, but quite good on the side of treatment. (I had to argue with the nurse to get treatment at the ER — she thought my complaint was not likely to be a serious condition, whilst I knew from a previous consultation elsewhere that my symptoms could possibly have signaled a very serious and vision-threatening condition. But once she got yelled at in Korean that since she wasn’t a doctor it was a violation of the law to try diagnose me, she booked me in and I got excellent treatment.) Your mileage may vary, of course. But I’ve been to some bad hospitals in Korea (especially in Jeonbuk), and this wasn’t remotely like any of them.
Whoops, by “location of the operation” in point #2, I meant the location of the operative site, ie. on her body.
Wow, Gord, thanks for that long excursus!
To Conambo and elvislovechild, the stripping down I can see. It’s like, “Man, I’m so exasperated, I’m ripping off my shirt! Don’t you see how upset I am!?” Then everything follows logically after that. Doesn’t make it any less bizarre, though. (Note: I haven’t actually seen the video—don’t want to sit through 16 mins of it—but I’m guessing that would be the explanation.)
And given the circumstances, I wouldn’t trust the hospital to do the autopsy either. It’s very sad to hear this story, but reporting their daughter’s death as murder? Or is there a crime in Korean law under the rubric of “murder” that encompasses involuntary manslaughter or whatever the equivalent is in Anglo-Saxon law for deaths that occur during medical care? Come to think of it, how are these sorts of cases handled in the US or Canada? Are there automatically independent (coroners’) inquests, or does it depend on the circumstances?
1) These nutballs clearly learned many of their moves from Korean politicians.
2) Anyone that thought this was actually about the daughter and wasn’t about the number of zeroes on the check the family would receive, wasn’t paying attention.
3) Someone let me know where I can get a few hundred pairs of those underwear. Fucking fantastic!
Being no stranger to grief myself, I sympathise with the family. However, the extreme reactions not only seem to belittle the deceased, but do not allow for an unprejudiced settlement of the case nor do they allow natural justice to take its course. For the cultural experts, is OTT reaction to perceived slight in this country common, or is it just something picked up in the media every once in a while?
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Correction to my comment #13: I suppose medical deaths are not generally treated as crimes in North America, or no one would be getting into medicine. I assume a coroner’s finding of “wrongful death” through medical malpractice or negligence is mainly to make it possible to seek redress at civil law?
And yes, regardless of whatever motives we might impute to the family, we should remember first and foremost that they have suddenly and unexpectedly lost a daughter whom they no doubt loved dearly—while in hospital care during or after surgery on a non-vital part of the body, due quite possibly to negligence (either someone screwed up in the OR, or the daughter or her family were not informed of risks, or possibly not enough was done when complications arose…or everything could have been done right and this was an unfortunate but unavoidable accident—but we don’t know yet). It would be a rare person indeed in ANY culture who would not seek financial redress, but that should not ipso facto negate or call into question their love or grief for their lost daughter.
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I’ve personally known interns, residents, and young doctors who are ordered to do CPR on dead bodies for up to 72 hours. The person is dead and is starting to decay, but the entire clan association is in the hallway yelling at hospital authorities to get the person walking again. None among them is about to be the first family member to openly admit there’s no chance - they’re like a bunch of North Koreans keeping watching each other to see who breaks ranks, and the person who yells and physically pushes at doctors and nurses the most is able to further prove his loyalty to the family member in question. Maybe a daughter-in-law who is actually quite relieved that the person has finally passed on into the next life will make the biggest scene of all in one final symbolic gesture, all the more so if there’s land or something to be inherited. If doctors just take a pulse and declare the person dead they get a riot.
On the other hand, malpractice is serious in Korea. Sorry but there’s just no other way to put it. It might be elsewhere, too, I wouldn’t know. But the difference is that the cards are stacked so high against you in such cases that little is ever done about it unless you’re someone very important with a lot of connections. That would make me wanna riot.
I remember reading through several reviews of “The Host” when it came out a few months back, and almost without exception, every reviewer made reference to the funeral scene with descriptions like “exaggerated hysterics,” “slapstick farce,” and “over-the-top.”
In other words, the assumption by Western reviewers was that the behavior was so ridiculous and unimaginable that it must be an intentional exaggeration played for laughs.
Little did they know that pathetically enough, it was played straight down the line.
Post #10 hits on a lot of good points. Can’t believe what they did with the girl’s body though-well it did get attention.
I think I read before here or somewhere else, that there could’ve have been talks of FTA dealing with the areas of medicine and education. Wonder if an FTA would’ve brought about some impetus for change in medical practices, which some areas definitely need more improvement. Might I add, more communication between the two groups of medical fields of practice - Western and traditional medicine. There’s a mutual distrust between the two. It’d be great if there’s more synergy between the too perspectives.
Malpractice (”medical accidents”) is estimated to be the 6th leading cause of death among South Koreans. And it could be even more serious than that (see second part).
Wow. I never thought this would make the news when my student mentioned it to me on Tuesday. I teach one of the girl’s classmates. She said she didn’t know the girl personally but, nevertheless seems close enough to the situation to have been upset by it.
From what she told me, Gord is right on the mark about the anaesthetic. My student told me that the girl was given too much of the anaesthetic and died… I’ll post more later. She’s bound to mention it, as she loves talking and will do anything to avoid the textbook… even if the subject is as morbid as this one.
There would be only few direct family in this video and other were distant relatives (aka 사돈의 팔촌). And it would be possible that other relatives or family members suggested and well planed to parents to get an official apology and lump sum from a hospital prior to sit down in the hospital lobby. Or the hospital already rejected what the family asked before this incident. Was it only choice family could have done? I don’t know nor easily draw a conclusion from Naver or Chosun article.
The Clip shows that one family member keep asking to take all the action and other voice from hospital side keep ordering not the hit any family members to those hospitals staffs (병원측 경호요원 aka 조직 폭력단). It is also a typical scene in Korea that the Police do not intervene during 조폭 in action. They do well cooperates each other very good if you look at this video carefully. One of very typical “only in Korea” incidents. It is typical violent incident between have and have not in Korea. That I could see from it. I really feel sorry for this family for their lost daughter.
H. Kim:
As I said, my father died this way, so I’ve had those feelings. When I was distraught, I wept, I hurt, I remembered and I wept and hurt some more.
But I didn’t drag my father’s corpse to the hospital lobby, demonstrate, remonstrate, scream murder, disrupt hospital operations, cause physical damage — and disrupting the treatment that hundreds of other patients were undergoing or seeking there that day — and then angle for piles and piles of money. So don’t try to tell me that “distraught” is any kind of excuse for all of that. Emotions get used as a justification for ridiculous actions far too often. This kind of behaviour warrants cold analysis, especially with the coda of a negotiation over money.
And what’s worse, for a death caused by a risk that is always mentioned before an operation is even booked. That sucks, and it’s heartbreaking, but it happens. You stand that risk too, if you go under general anaesthetic. I’m actually quite sorry for their loss, I feel badly knowing some girl died with her life unlived, that she was so unlucky. But I’m sorry, it doesn’t justify psychotic behaviour.
To start screaming murder before the autopsy is even performed is over the top. To claim that you don’t want an autopsy performed — you don’t want a real determination of guilt — is to act in bad faith. I’m sure if they’d demanded the body be transferred for autopsy, this scene would not have happened, and after all they did have the right to refuse an autopsy if they were willing to drop the claim.
This therefore looks to me like a case of, “We want to accuse malpractice, and stage a demo so disruptive that they pay out more to get rid of us, and heaven forbid anyone demands proof of our claims.” So you’ll excuse me, H. Kim, if my analysis is cold. Even the emotional factor isn’t a justification for that sort of behaviour.
Oranckay’s pretty much on the money, though I still kind of doubt the motivations of parents who settle for money after having cried “Murder!” I’ve heard of CPR for a few hours, but never anything like 72 hours. That’s ridiculous and sad; and yeah, the other sad thing is how common malpractice actually is. I certainly don’t blame the family for suspecting it, or even being outraged if they were dealt with in a haughty manner (which is entirely possible) but there is a line between doubting or demanding evidence, and terrorizing a hospital and trying to prevent evidence from coming to light. As Oranckay says, it would make you wanna riot, but how many people would?
And Bipolar Mindscrew — the risk of postoperative complications comes with general anaesthetic, period. The preliminary autopsy reports aren’t that she was over-anaesthetized, but simply that she reacted badly to the anaesthetic. Which is what basically 0.03% of people do. Your student probably read one or another lurid “speculative” report on the case, based on the fact that the reporter didn’t know that this is in fact a “normal” reaction to a proper amount of anaesthetic in a very small minority of people? (ie. That death from the anaesthetic isn’t necessarily a sign of having been given too much of it.)
Personally, I feel badly mostly about this kid who was screwed over by bad luck. I imagine she’d have been mortified to see people fighting over her body, to see her folks fighting for more money, to see them act so ridiculously and bring discredit on themselves when their accusations of murder — not a light accusation, after all — are invesstigated and turn out to be ridiculous.
And to answer Sewing’s question, an autopsy is normally performed to confirm the suspicion of postoperative complications. The patient’s family can refuse it, as my mother did when my father passed away in exactly this way, but at risk of losing some insurance benefits, and so on. But if there’s any doubt as to negligence, an autopsy is routine and the patient’s family can assumably require it to be held at a different hospital.
UL: I suspect most of the FTA stuff was discussions of generic brand medicines and their pricing. Personally, I’m glad about the amount of distrust Korean doctors feel about Oriental medicine. If they were more credulous to pseudo-magical explanations of the workings of the body, I’d be alarmed. (Why should the idea of “chi” be any more credible to us modern people than the idea of the four humors? Just because it’s a “non-Western” idea?) There’s no more reason for Korean doctors to start using Oriental Medicine than there is for Western doctors to try bloodletting again.
Thanks to Gordsellar and Oranckay for giving this bizarre event some context.
Like Sewing too, I’m wondering if there’s an independent coroner’s inquest in Korea, anybody know how that works?
The family’s theatrics and probable avarice are disgusting–actually, it’s beyond comprehension that people would debase their own daughter like this.
It seems to easy to see this episode cynically. Maybe I’m naive, but I cannot see the family members, who certainly NEVER expected their young daughter to die as a result of an operation on a broken arm, in the midst of their utter despair deciding to coldly and tactically maneuver simply to get a large amount of money from the hospital.
None of us know them and I think they deserve some credit for the loss they’ve suffered and the benefit of the doubt in regard to the sincerity of their grief.
Sure, if we were to imagine this as having happened in the U.S., or Canada, or elsewhere where we have enough confidence to trust doctors and the workings of the “system” (although that confidence may be misplaced at times), we could not see doing such a thing as the family did. But here in Korea, knowing what we do about just how the hospital might handle the aftermath of their possible negligence, can we judge the family so harshly?
Dogbert, going by the details Gordsellar mentioned like banging cymbals and the chanting, it probably wasn’t calculated avarice but the usual theatrics we see in Korea all the time. It seems like ingrained behavior. Demanding compensation for negligence is understandable, but dragging your child’s body into the hospital lobby and not allowing a timely autopsy? That’s just wrong whatever the motivation.
Again, I was not there, but going from the information in this post, it was not that the parents did not want a timely autopsy, but that they did not want _that hospital_ to perform the autopsy. Given the circumstances, that is perfectly understandble.
As far as the family members keeping the body with them, people do strange things at times of grief. Personally, I’ve always found the Irish custom of a three-day “wake” held in the presence of a corpse disturbing. But that’s their culture.
And as even Gord Sellar noted, the family should have the right _not_ to allow an autopsy. Neither you nor I can judge that to be wrong.
As far as chanting and whatnot, I’m as mystified as anyone of Northern European background why Koreans love noise as much as they do, but that’s what they do. I still don’t see the cynicism there.
I don’t see this cynically, I’m just puzzled. Also, the chanting, whatever, it’s the usual theatrics, just maybe a little inappropriate in a hospital lobby, no?
“The media frenzy has at least something to do with the popular distrust of doctors, which is at an all-time high. ”
…Which I suspect has a lot to do with the doctors’ shutting up their offices in protest of new laws that would grant nurses an increased number of rights and privileges (is it three times already?). Either way, it certainly doesn’t help ones image when the medical doctor’s association is opposed to laws that would ostensibly improve patient welfare.
Ditto to what Dogbertt wrote. People in different cultures act out grief, distress, exasperation, and so on in different ways, and there is the complication of the evident widespread problem with (a) malpractice in Korea and (b) how it is dealt with by the medical and legal systems.
A Korean ajumma at the end of her rope might sit cross-legged down on the ground and pound it with her fist, crying out, “aigo, aigo,” which many a Westerner wouldn’t do (even if the expression were translated). That shouldn’t in and of itself make her behaviour bizarre or crass. The Anglo-Saxon stiff upper lip in such situations would probably seem insanely coldhearted to many Koreans. This isn’t a matter of moral relativism, but simply one of basic cultural anthropology.
Again, even in the context of Korean culture, it is in fact bizarre and inappropriate to take your daughter’s body into the hospital lobby and throw hysterics. It’s not moral relativism because even my Korean coworkers found this to be odd and offensive.
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For the love of Christ, do we really need to get into another gyopo-expat pissing contest?
H Kim,
In fact, a friend and I were discussing Korean funerals recently and we agreed that the behaviour at those events is probably much healthier than the stiff upper lip expected of the bereaved in North American/Anglo culture. You actually have no idea how I indeed reacted to my father’s death or behaved at his funeral beyond what I said, and all I really said was that I didn’t attack the hospital. Don’t assume you do know more than that.
By the way, Canadian health care might be good, but it’s still broken. The operation that my father died after was related to a condition that went untreated for a ridiculous amount of time. In fact, Canadian health care has some serious problems too, mostly structural, and I felt some rage about them while there.
Outside the context of whatever racial politics are longstanding in your discussions with Dogbert elsewhere, you may be a little more right about “celebrity treatment” than Dogbert gives you credit for. You’re exaggerating by calling it celebrity treatment, of course, but sometimes I find nurses trying to bump me ahead in line, for example. (It actually bugs me and I insist on waiting like everyone else.) I’ve also found some doctors willing to spend a little longer answering my questions and so on, while Korean patients often get shuffled out quickly. But when I’ve asked why this is the case, some of those same doctors have claimed that I’m the only one seriously asking about my condition or what this prescription will actually do.
It may be a question of chicken and egg, as patients have been conditioned by years of authoritarian doctoring; but also, the workload placed on inexperienced doctors — residents and interns — is so high that burnout sets in quickly. This is a major problem in the system of training doctors, not only here, but it’s especially bad here. But I do know that I was standing in the lobby of that ER arguing with a nurse to get someone to look at me because the flashing spots in my eyes made me think I was going blind… I had to argue for treatment just like any Korean would in that circumstance. So it’s not all celebrity treatment.
You’re possibly right that my compassion is limited, but compassion will never make me understand behaviour like this, and I’m not alone either.
(Of course, I think you’re out of line with your silly comments about maxing out someone’s whole life policy and killing them. I’m sorry, but that’s a crime, and basically unheard of, where I’m from.)
As far as I understand it, this family has slandered the hospital, slandered a specific doctor, made unfounded accusations of murder, tried to impede the investigation that they themselves demanded, disrupted the operations of the hospital (and slowed or jeopardized the treatment of many other patients), and then backed off from a murder accusation when a money settlement was offered.
As Michael points out, H. Kim and Sewing, it’s not a cultural thing, because the vast majority of Koreans don’t react this way to a death of this kind. (If they did, this wouldn’t be news.) Most Koreans would never even dream of behaving in this way. This is an oddity, and the (few) Koreans I’ve discussed it with have expressed negative feelings about this behaviour. So it’s not wholly an issue of cultural anthropology, unless you mean the Margaret Mead kind. Koreans are tolerant of more emotional reactions, but come on: how often to they drag their dead to demonstrations?
I’d be interested to know whether, under Korean law, a family normally has a right to forgo autopsy.
Certainly, it seems only sensible that any such right would become forfeit once the family accused the treating physician with negligence or murder, wouldn’t you agree? Or can we accuse anyone we want of murder, and refuse to let it be properly investigated?
Whatever, I’m done commenting on this, unless of course any new result comes down from the autopsy, in which case I’ll pop by and mention it.
Gordsellar and Michael, points taken. I’m not unconditionally taking the family’s side here and know nothing more about the situation than anyone else. Heck, half of what I know is what you reported upthread. And in the interests of full disclosure, I haven’t yet watched the video. But upon rereading your comment #10, your assessment of the family’s motives and behaviour seems stone cold. We don’t know how at wit’s end they were. Perhaps that family has had past experiences of malpractice or experiences with that hospital in the past and are fed up. Maybe the Koreans around you come from a different socieconomic stratum or otherwise different demographic than the family in question, that leads them to see the family’s behaviour as backward or what have you. Or maybe I’m completely off base. I just don’t know—but none of us really know.
And lest you think I’m a complete flake, no less a cynic than Dogbertt in comment #26 said much the same thing (which threw me for a loop). As for H. Kim, he and I had at it on another post, so I don’t want to go there again. While I agree with him on this particular point, I vehemently disagree with the general tenor of his comments.
I had a very delicate procedure performed here that required 5 hours on the table and a week’s worth of in-hospital recovery (and months of post-operative care and rehab). Despite the fact that I was then not only a foreigner but a recently “ennobled” foreign investor, that I was introduced to the surgeon by one of his residents, who was the fiance of one of my employees and that I had a condition that is quite rare among people of other than a Northern European ancestry - which made it very “attractive” to the surgeon, who was one of an extremely small number in his field and almost the only one in Korea who had any experience with my condition, I never received any special treatment. I waited in the bullpen with the hoi polloi for both the pre-surgical consults and all the post-op care. Because I wanted to recover out of earshot of other patient’s relatives and incessantly blaring TVs, I had a private room - despite what H. Kim says, many hospitals here have them - I know, I checked around - but I paid full boat for it (see below). I probably had longer consults with my doctors, but that was due to a combination of my insistence on asking a lot of questions and getting answers, the time spent fumbling around in a combination of English and Korean and the doctors’/hospitals’ concerns about liability issues with someone of my professional background. Like Dogbert I had to fuss about getting fresh laundry. The upsides were that I received a level and quality of treatment that were on a par with what other members of my family received for the same condition in New York and Michigan, and that I got it for about 10% of the cost of the operation in the US, only 40% of which I actually had to pay (and that was essentially, the cost of the private room). [Perhaps, I should note that I went through the "system" - not one of the rip-off foreign or international clinics that many of the Korean hospitals run.] The downside is that I nearly didn’t wake up from the general anesthesia. I have declined general anesthesia for every operation I’ve had since my tonsils were taken out (when I didn’t know any better), incl. abdominal surgery, but that wasn’t an option this time because the delicacy of the procedure made it imperative that I not flinch while I was watching. My guess is that the man with the gas didn’t have much experience with someone my size and/or my then overall physical condition was so poor that I was at increased risk. Lessons: do your research; take the pain (or at least only get a local)(if at all possible) and not the gas.
Ever since the MBC drama “White Power” aired, the Korean medical system, doctor malpractices, and the system that protects the doctors, have come under an intense spotlight. The above incident will no doubt harden Korean mistrust of doctors and hospitals.
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Don’t get me wrong, I know some very good doctors here…but you have to be careful who you go to. Some are in it just for the money or the prestige.
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“The girl had gone in for surgery to treat a broken arm caused by a benign tumor, but died during the operation.”
I got confused for a second after reading this here on how a tumor would break someone’s arm. Then I read the original article and from what I can tell, they disocovered the tumor WHILE treating the broken arm.
(hey, what do you know, comments work apparently)
Actually, that’s where it gets a bit confused. The second article said the tumor caused the break. The first piece, as you noticed, suggested she was undergoing surgery for the tumor. The second said she was undergoing surgery for the broken arm caused by the tumor. Fucked if I know which one is correct.
Proof that the media is much more retarded that the medicos in Korea. For all of the people who have slammed the medical care in Korea, think of this. The Chinese don’t want to turn on the diagnostic equipment and the Japanese have taught themselves medicine for far too many years. Koreans are hypochondriacs and over cautious but compare it to the slip-shot care you would get elsewhere. My money is on Korea.
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of US presidential candidate John Edwards, was found to have bone cancer while receiving treatment at a hospital for a broken rib that was caused by a growing tumor.
Ledtim,
Bone tumors can most certainly weaken the bone structure, which will cause fractures.
Sorry for the poor composition.
Sonagi,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteosarcoma
I suppose tumors can weaken bones, though that’s not as cool as an anthromorphosized tumor going around breaking limbs like I first imagined.
Sonagi
I read that Liz Edwards broke her ribs lifting and her cancer was on the other side of her body from the broken rib.
Those who know me well know that I haven’t done this for quite a while. I am posting 99% in ignorance because I have neither read the story nor watched the video.
I am moved to write here for two reasons:
1) Both my parents died (separately) in hospitals. In the case of my father, there was some suggestion on the past of my stepmother that the docs coulda done more. I was distraught in both cases, but neither time did I react like Koreans (and others) have been known to do. Interestingly, though, in the case of the man shedding his kit, I find the image strikingly Biblical - tearing one’s clothes asunder and beating one’s breast, etc. Can Koreans tap into a form of emotional expression that we in the West have long bottled up? Are we the ‘abnormal’ ones? No answers from me - only questions.
2) Two weeks ago last Tuesday I was at the very same hospital to undergo a free medical examination, including urine, blood, chest x-rays and abdomimal ultrasound. The deal was that a photographer would follow me and snapshot my peripatations around the hospital, in order to use the resulting pics in promotional material for that hospital. Yes gang, I was a Token White Guy being given free medical services in exchange for my face being used to pimp the place out to other foreigners.
I was assigned a nurse from the hospital, who was supposed to be on a rostered day off but was brought in because she was the only one who spoke any English (props to Da-hui - your help was appreciated!). Overall I was happy with the service I got, although I do think that when they take blood, they should automatically do a test for cancer markers - especially in this day and age.
I must also say that I found the endoscopy (camera in a long snaky thing that they stick down your throat into your stomach) was a much less uncomfortable experience at S hospital than it was at the more famous Y* S* hospital in Seoul, where I did it in late 2005. They sedated me and I fell asleep - no dry retching this time. Happy to be able to share that with you all.
Yeah, and um, I don’t know how I got to be registered in Japan, but I assure you all I am in the ROK, and have not visited the eastern islands for some years now. Marmot?
I love doctors.
[DELETED. Reason: Lecturing someone about the tone or choice of lexicon in his comment is off topic and inappropriate.]
The following is a summary of my original posts that were germane to this discussion, but removed by Oranckay nevertheless:
#10:
That’s quite a statement and I argue that this family was more than pissed off. (I too, have been pissed off, usually when I can’t find my watch or keys in the morning.) Based on what I could tell from the video, this family was NOT “pissed off”, but rather heavily distraught and inconsolable over their daughter’s death.
For gordsellar to impute ulterior motives and evil intentions on this family (”angling to get more money from the hospital”) as well his distorted perception that the family was using their daughter’s body as a “display object”, is not only objectionable, but also reflects his ignorance and insensitivity to social conditions in Korea.
As JiMong correctly stated, this is merely an example of another classic “violent confrontation between the haves and havenots”, being played out yet again in media. I think it is very difficult for foreigners to understand this conflict, b/c as outsiders, they are not a part of it and are shielded from it (has this been reported in the English press?.
That being said, gordsllar has no evidence beyond the purely circumstantial that the bereaved family was angling for more money from the hospital.
Also, gordsellar’s accusation of the bereaved is not only unseemly, it’s hardly something you would expect in this context. Normal people offer condolences or seek to sympathize — not attribute nefarious motives.
Also, gorsellar seems to lack any cultural sensitivity whatsoever when he says that the family was using the daughter’s object as a “display object”.
Anyone who saw the video can see that the family is NOT “displaying” their daughter’s body like goods for sale, but simply trying to prevent it from being taken.
To say that Korean people can be highly emotional as well as display shocking behavior when distraught or overcome with grief is an understatement. (You need to attend a few funerals from Koreans of varying social classes — not just wealthy educated ones — to understand this.)
IMO, the chaos that ensued was not b/c of the family’s behavior per se, but b/c of the Jopok who were injected into the fray — probably hired by the hospital to strong arm the family out of there — in addition to the riot police who were apparently trying to do remove the body.
Gordslellar’s procrustean pronouncements and callous comments aside, I basically agree with sewing and dogbertt that grieving is NOT a one-size-fits-all affair, and that it is wrong to impose Anglo-Saxon norms on a Korean event taking place in Korea.
Also with regards to special treatment received by foreigners in hospitals, Sperwer’s comment #45 where he described treatment as an “ennobled foreign investor” indicates that it is not unusual for a foreigner — especially if they are English speaking — to receive special treatment from doctors here.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that; however, it does have the effect of shielding foreigners from the reality of how Koreans of no special standing actually live.
I too have experienced this myself in Korean hospitals — not as “ennobled investor” — bus simply b/c I was American.
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I agree with most of H. Kim’s comments regarding the family, but note again that foreigners do not always receive special treatment at Korean hospitals, unless by “special treatment” he means no access to hot water and the privilege of wearing filth-encrusted hospital clothes for days straight.
Again, I argue that special treatment is far more likely to correlate with wealth than it is skin color.
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H Kim:
You reference my comment in support of your claim of special treatment for foreigners, when I explicitly stated that I received no such special treatment, despite what I ironically described as my presumed special status as a foreign investor. You are either ignorant or dishonest - or both.
[DELETED. Reason: Response to off topic comment.]
#43: Sperwer said:
Despite your insistence to the contrary, you did in fact receive special treatment if for no other reason than b/c:
1) You were a foreigner;
2) You were a foreign investor;
3) You had “connection” at the hospital;
4) You had a rare condition of interest to the surgeon.
So while being foreigner was not the only reason for your receiving special treatment, it certainly was a factor. And don’t misunderstand — there’s nothing wrong with getting or trying to get “special treatment”. Koreans do it all the time with varying degrees of success. (FWIW, the best way to get quality treatment at a Korean hospital is to claim some sort of special status or to imply specialness as Sperwer did.)
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Foreigners can get medical treatment in Korea? Unbelievable.
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All of statements 1-4 are correct, but none of them resulted in my receiving any “special” treatment, nor support the attempted inference that such (non-existent) special treatment was attributable to my foreign status. That I had a connection at the hospital was a result of simple coincidence that has nothing necessarily to do with my status as a foreigner/investor, and that I had a condition of particular interest to the surgeon didn’t get me any more or better attention, unless you think that getting paraded as a case study in front of a bunch of medical students qualifies as “special” treatment; my treatment wa special only in the trivial sense that it was appropriate to my particular and unusual condition. But since you seem to know so much about my hospital stay, why don’t you let me know, specifically, what was so special about it that was directly linked to my foreign status.
The Korea Times has a story on this now, in case you haven’t seen it.
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The Censor’s strong-armed deletions in this post are unacceptable. By deleting H. Kim’s initial comment, the Censor obscures the meaning here. Oranckay please go back to (not) posting on your own blog.
We’re all adults. We can decide for ourselves who a bigot, a fool, or an errant nationalist is. Anyway, it’s up to you guys. It’s your blog and if you don’t like what I say, the hell with me.
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“The Censor’s strong-armed deletions in this post are unacceptable.”
Overall, I was for things being cleaned up here. That was until I got my comment smoked for reasons that remain unclear to me. (I have been hesitant to touch this topic since.) I appreciate that the Marmot and Oranckay are busy and have to make some tough and/or quick decisions, but this one really bugs me.
My comment that happened to agree, at least in part, with some of what H.Kim was saying about people rushing to judge the family and a comment that had nothing to do with some of the same old gyopo-related debates I don’t enjoy either. Do commenting on one’s experiences with the healthcare system here or pointing out that generalizations can cheapen the debare here an escalation?
If anyone out there can point out to me a pattern of bigotry in my posts, please do. In the meantime, the suggestion - through the deletion of my post - for having been involved in some gyopo-related debate (which had nothing to do with the topics of healthcare or the death of this poor girl) actually bothers me a fair bit. Anyway, I guess this post is a little off topic, so we’ll see if it gets wiped out too…
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just wondering where this purported “bad reputation” of the comments section resides.
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globalvillageidiot, first of all, no one, including yourself, has reason to think there’s a “pattern of bigotry” in your comments, or at least that there was in the comment I deleted. It might have been a very positive and helpful off topic response to an bigoted comment, for all I know. Since as a matter of principle we’re not going to be explaining the rationale behind specific deletion decisions, it is nice and convenient for me to be able to honestly tell you I don’t remember why I deleted you @44. It might have been collateral damage (as we said their might be in this process) after a rash and quick carpet bombing deletion campaign. I doubt it, but can’t deny that possibility. FWIW, for at least the time being we’re not going to edit comment content. If someone writes 20 helpful paragraphs but begins or ends with, for example, “anyone who thinks I’ve recieved special treatment for being a (whatever) is talking nonsense” - which would’ve been problematic in this case given the string of inappropriate comments at the time - the best way to encourage people to stay on topic and deliberately ignore inappropriate comments is to delete the whole 20 paragraphs so as to emphasize a policy of zero tolerance (and editing comments is far more work and requires even more “judgement” of specific statements by others). I really, truly don’t remember what happened with yours so this is only a “general, for example” example, so please don’t let it bother you, at least as much as it might if you could be sure I/we decided you were being bigoted. I’m quite sure that if anyone went through the comments I’ve made here over the years plenty of comments would be deleted. I’m sorry, really, and should we ever meet in Seoul please let me buy you a beer.
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Sure is fun under the Schroepfer regime.
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Did oranckay delete himself in #69?
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LOL
H. Kim,
Last comment, and I’m making it short and sweet. You’re still trying to pretend this is not wacked out in Korea. Do you think this would have been in the news the way it was, if it were normal? Wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, old hat if that were the case?
I see you claim that outsiders, as shielded from this kind of conflict, cannot understand it. Buit being a foreigner in Korea is not a one-size-fits-all affair. Close friends of mine have had bad experiences on both sides of the medical desk, and frankly, in all kinds of walks of life. It might make more sense to can the dismissals and talk about context a little. Such as the Korean context, in which this outburst was very big and very weird.
FWIW, though, if the Jopok were brought in my the hospital — if they were indeed gangster thugs — then that does reflect badly on the hospital. Is there evidence the hospital called them in, though?
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He is harsh but fair.
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Oranckay,
<>
Please grow some balls. You don’t need to write long explanations. Just delete.
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we need to get shelton in on this game. i bet he’d be really good at it.
[DELETED. Reason: Response to off topic comment.]
Scene: U.N. Secretary General’s Situation Room
[Enter Gen. Sec. Ban Ki-moon]
Flunky: Sir, intelligence claims our comrades to the Nor^H^H^H the Norks are going to test a second nuclear bomb within 24 hrs.!!!
Ban: Get a grip on yourself, Mr. Kim! Let’s just all be calm…
Kim: What are we going to do?!?? It will start WWIII!!! Gaaaaaaah….
Ban: I know! Get your laptop plugged in and let’s see what Koehler has to say …
[Kim types http://www.rjkoehler.com on his laptop]
Ban: Let’s just take a looksee … hmmm
Click on that one…WTF??!?!? He’s got two naked Korean women taking a bath ??? I can’t make out what they’re saying … they must be Norks!
Kim: No, sir, those are just naked Filipinas, they’re speaking Tagalog.
Ban: Well, some Cholla farmer will be a happy man tonight! Now, let’s see what nulji has to say… ah feck him! At times like this only baduk’s sage advice will do!
“Kim is China’s bitch! Nuke him!”
Well, there’s our answer right there! Call Bushie, Kim …
Thanks to H. Kim for pointing out the likelihood that it was 조폭 (jopok, or gangsters) who were (probably) hired by the hospital to come in and rough up the family. I know that this does occur in Korea - does anyone remember the incident at Sejong Hospital with striking workers busted up by jopok a year or so ago?
I also witnessed jopok in my local market coming in to evict some stallholders who were obscuring the entrance to a newly opened Bada Iyagi (Sea Story) gambling palace. They put the stallholders stuff onto trucks and carted it away, putting container boxes down so that the stalls could not be set up again. (Last laugh: the gambling house closed, the container boxes are gone, and the stallholders are back.)
My Korean missus said it is sad that the police stand by and let the hired thugs do their dirty work, but it is not a rare occurrence.
Anyway, for me it makes me think I’d not like to go back to that hospital again for treatment. Thinking about dropping a line to the administrator….
Oranckay, any comments about police/jopok collusion?