Lee Sohee: "Errors in Medical Dispute Mediation Act Report... Author Went to Presidential Office, Board of Audit and Inspection"

Report listed suspects as prosecution cases
Co-author promoted... Lee Sohee: "Not an appointment, but a settling of accounts"

During the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee’s parliamentary audit on the 7th, lawmakers criticized the criminal immunity for medical professionals in the Medical Dispute Mediation Act, revised this year, saying it had been pushed forward on the basis of inaccurate statistics. Questions were also raised about the appointment to the Board of Audit and Inspection of a co-author of the report containing those statistics, after he had served as a senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs at Cheong Wa Dae.

Lee Sohee, a People Power Party lawmaker. Provided by Lee Sohee's office.

The committee held an audit of the Ministry of Health and Welfare that day. At the hearing, committee member Lee Sohee of the People Power Party criticized the statistics from the Korean Medical Association’s Research Institute for Healthcare Policy, which had been cited as a necessary basis for drafting amendments to the Medical Dispute Mediation Act. Under the amendments, medical professionals cannot be prosecuted for professional negligence resulting in death or injury if they pay the full amount of damages in a medical accident.

“The reported figure of 754 prosecutions of doctors per year is actually the number of suspects, incorrectly presented as the number of prosecutions,” Lee said. “Academics and patient groups call this fake news.” She also noted that a study commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Welfare from the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs found an average of 34.4 criminal court rulings involving medical professionals per year from 2019 to 2023.

Lee asked, “Have you obtained objective data showing that medical professionals face excessive criminal punishment compared with other professionals, or research establishing a causal link between the risk of criminal punishment and doctors leaving the medical field?” Health and Welfare Minister Jung Eun-kyung cited cases including a decline in pediatric specialists following the deaths of newborns at Mokdong Hospital. Lee responded, “That is a specific case,” adding, “It is difficult to say that a causal relationship has been established.”

Lee Jin-guk, then a professor at Ajou University Law School and a co-author of the Research Institute for Healthcare Policy report that formed the basis for the amendments, served as the first senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs at Cheong Wa Dae under the Lee Jae-myung administration in 2025 and left the post this past February. He was appointed as an audit commissioner at the Board of Audit and Inspection last June, after the law was amended. Lee said, “He was not recognized for correcting the inaccurate statistics, but for using them to blind the public. This was not an appointment; it was a payoff.”

In response, Minister Jung said, “The amendments have been under review since February 2024,” adding, “They were not created under the influence of an individual senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs.” Lee, however, criticized the legislation, saying it had been fast-tracked following President Lee’s instructions last December: “It was legislation that was rushed at the president’s word, focused solely on speed while even bypassing the process of gathering input from the medical community and patient groups.”

Meanwhile, Lee held a joint press conference with the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice at the National Assembly Communication Center that afternoon. At the event, the coalition called for a full review of criminal immunity provisions based on the need to control legal risks. It also announced its withdrawal from the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Consultative Body on Improving the Medical Dispute Mediation System and called for the law to be amended again.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.