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 government audit on October 7, lawmakers questioned whether the medical professionals’ criminal immunity provision in the Medical Dispute Mediation Act, revised this year, had been pursued on the basis of flawed statistics. Questions were also raised over the appointment to the Board of Audit and Inspection of a co-author of the report containing those statistics, after the author had served as a senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs.

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

The National Assembly Health and Welfare 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 statistics from the Korean Medical Association’s Research Institute for Healthcare Policy, which were cited as a basis for amending the Medical Dispute Mediation Act. The amendment stipulates that a medical professional cannot be prosecuted for professional negligence resulting in injury or death if full compensation is paid for damages caused by a medical accident.

“The reported figure of 754 annual prosecutions of doctors 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 said 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 evidence that medical professionals face excessive criminal penalties 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-kyeong cited cases such as a decline in pediatric specialists following the deaths of newborns at Mokdong Hospital. Lee countered that these were “specific cases” and that “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 underpinned the amendment, served as the first senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs under the Lee Jae-myung administration in 2025 and left the post last February. He was appointed to the Board of Audit and Inspection in June, after the law was amended. Lee said, “Rather than correcting the flawed statistics, he was rewarded for using them to mislead the public. This was a payoff, not an appointment.”

In response, Jung said, “The [amendment] has been under review since February 2024” and that “the system was not created through the influence of the senior presidential secretary for judicial affairs as an individual.” Lee, however, criticized the amendment, saying it was expedited after President Lee’s instructions last December: “This legislation was rushed at one word from President Lee, focusing solely on speed and even skipping the process of gathering opinions 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 Hall that afternoon. The group 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 revised again.

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