Dirty Pills and the Joongang Daily Shills

I am a surprised that the current Asbestos controversy has not engendered much talk here. With any consumer safety issue in Korea these days, my knee-jerk is to recall protests the “safety threat” US beef invoked. Realizing that was not much of post, I remained quiet. Recently though I reviewed some of my past work, and it struck me this really needs some write-up.

First, let me take you way back, or well just a month back for the most recent example. In the past couple years the Korean government has been pushing medicine as Korea’s next big growth industry. The meteoric rise and spectacular supernova of the Hwang Woo-suk debacle is perhaps the most memorable of this promotion. However Korea has been pushing everything from pharmaceuticals to medical tourism as the next big growth industry.

Now comes the recent scandal, well over a thousands different Korean made drugs, cosmetics, and other consumer products were found to be laced with cancer-causing asbestos. Among the firms effected are the largest of pharmaceutical firms in Korea (Dong-A, Yuhan, Green Cross, etc.). The actual threat to public is debatable, however I think it’s safe to say that this is an impurity NOBODY wants in products used so intimately.

However these leaders of the Korean medical industry put out over a thousand different products with a well-known carcinogenic impurity. When I think about this, it leads to two possible observations:

1. These Korean pharmaceutical titans never tested for the stuff.
2. They tested it, found it, and were willing to take the PR flack, if not medical repercussions, of it being found.

Both of these lead to the same troubling conclusion in my mind. If this is what we find publicly, what do we not know about? What else do the not test for? What do they find and quietly pass on?

Paranoid you say? Well perhaps so, but let me give you some food for thought. I could pick the low hanging fruit of the myriad similar problems over the past year (from tainted milk to knife points to red dye), but I want to focus on another part of the problem. The Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) is supposed to take the lead in food and drug safety, however I wonder if they are up to the task, as many are saying the saying these days:

Experts argue that the KFDA has a fundamental flaw in its oversight system, and they say structural reform should be a top priority. “Unless wide-scale reform measures are executed, yet another shocking accident will happen soon,” said a medical industry insider. 

And I remind readers of this KFDA article in the wake of the scares last year. Some cuts:

Lee Chun-su, a 55-year-old trader, dropped dried chili spice from his list of imports because he heard of a ban on natural coloring additives in pepper products to be imposed by the Korean Food and Drug Administration in May… Lee said that such products are still being sold because the Korean Food and Drug Administration did not crack down after creating the regulation… “Because pepper pigment and pepper are made of the same components, there is no way for us to test them,” said a KFDA official. [So the "experts" in the KFDA made a regulation they knew they could not enforce? WTF?]

…According to its reports to the National Assembly, the KFDA said two of its employees had received bribes from a food importer in 2004 and allowed the firm to import ingredients that contained banned antiseptics. After the ingredients were later tested as unfit for use, the two officials changed the tester and re-examined the products. When the same results emerged, the officials pressured the lab to change the outcome of the test.

…According to Democratic Party Representative Choi Young-hee, a senior KFDA executive used a credit card belonging to a cosmetics company CEO from June 2006 to October 2007, spending more than 6 million won. He also received 1 million won worth of gift certificates and other presents from the company… Working as the pharmaceutical division chief from February 2006 to July 2007, the official was in charge of testing the safety and efficacy of pharmaceutical and cosmetics products and setting standards. During that time, the cosmetics company underwent 268 tests and passed every one… After the case was made public, the KFDA suspended the official for one month, and he stepped down from his position… “The KFDA is unbelievably lenient toward officials who received bribes,” said Choi. 

Meanwhile there are other aspects of the KFDA that make one wonder what their priorities are. In this current incident alone, the KFDA is allowing 22 tainted drugs to remain on the market with the rationale there are no suitable replacements. I wonder exactly what they mean by “suitable”. Given the oft made observation most Korean pharmaceutical firms do not have unique drugs and largely make generics, the same generics made by many countries around the world, I wonder if by “suitable” they mean a “Korean made generic”. While speculation, I think this does fall in inline with other KFDA policies that are seen as non-tariff barriers by the US Trade Representatives Office (note: PDF link). There was also the odd story a few months ago with the KFDA paying a higher bounty to uncover mislabeled meat over more unambiguous threats to public health (like glass in your food).

Why is all this important to bring out? Simple. If Korea really wants to get an admired and trusted medical industry, its going to have to do things to gain that admiration and trust. I find the lack of quality control, or worse the willful ignorance of these controls, in this case to be a huge liability in this field. And to compound the problem you have a problematic regulatory system with questionable motives. Korea will defiantly have to address all of these problems if they want to grow this sector. As I said before, before anyone complains about the “unfair” “Korean Discount”, it’s worth to think why it’s discounted in the first place.

Of course, part of that regulatory system is a strong press, which has its own problems in Korea. Case in point is this puffy piece from the Joongang Daily today. In the middle of the cosmetic industry ensnared in this asbestos contamination problem, not even one mention of it in his glossy feature about Taepyungyang? Even when it was reportedly caught for importing chemically laced green tea?