South Korea will provide training for Mongolian medical professionals from next week as part of a bilateral project to strengthen Mongolia’s healthcare system. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Friday that the program will support Mongolia’s goal of training 1,000 doctors and other healthcare workers. The initiative follows a training agreement signed by the two countries in March. Under the pilot program, six Mongolian medical professionals will train at medical facilities in South Korea

Reports of abuse against people with disabilities in Korea reached 6,608 in 2025, up 9.6 percent from the previous year, according to government data released Friday. The Ministry of Health and Welfare’s 2025 report on abuse against people with disabilities showed that 3,375 reports, just over half the total, were classified as suspected abuse. The number of confirmed abuse cases reached 1,505, up about 4 percent from the previous year. Among reports classified as suspected abuse, just over a qu

Jeff Yoo approaches fellow doctors on the street with a camera, inviting them to share perspectives that patients may rarely hear in a consultation room. The emergency physician has built an Instagram following of around 1.2 million in 16 months. He hopes those conversations can also reach people who no longer trust doctors, an audience he worries his profession is losing. “I’m not going to throw away my credibility just for views and follows on a social media application,” Yoo said in an interv

Prescriptions for controlled medications, including the ADHD drug methylphenidate and the anesthetic propofol, were heavily concentrated in Seoul's affluent Gangnam area last year, data showed Monday. According to local daily Kookmin Ilbo, citing data submitted by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety to Democratic Party of Korea Rep. Nam In-soon, Gangnam-gu in southern Seoul recorded the highest volume of methylphenidate prescriptions across Seoul and Gyeonggi Province last year, at about 6.5 mi

South Korea’s effort to recruit elderly care workers through a dedicated visa has so far yielded limited results, with only a fraction of the annual quota being filled, a lawmaker said. This comes as the government prepares for a surge in demand for long-term care as the population ages and more older people require professional assistance with daily activities. However, as the government explores other ways to recruit and retain care workers, experts warn that staff shortages could persist with

A government-funded program for foreign patients seeking treatment in South Korea has not tracked how many patients stop receiving aftercare after returning home or why, government data shows. The data, obtained from the Korea Health Industry Development Institute by Rep. So Byung-hoon of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, was released Tuesday. The program provides preliminary consultations for foreign patients seeking treatment in Korea and follow-up care after they return home, using inform

When a cabin announcement asked, “Is there any doctor on board?” Kamilov Hasan Bakhriddinovich came to the aid of a woman in severe shock aboard a flight from Uzbekistan to Korea on Sunday. The 43-year-old Uzbek ear, nose and throat specialist recounted the emergency in an interview with The Korea Herald on Wednesday, after a post showing him treating the woman spread rapidly online. “I got up from my seat within 0.5 seconds,” Hasan, now in his 16th year as a doctor, said. “I knew that even a sm

South Korea’s National Health Insurance Service will launch a system Wednesday to track and share suspected cases of forged documents submitted by foreign nationals seeking health insurance coverage or dependent registration. The system will allow NHIS offices nationwide to share records of document checks and cases suspected of forgery, the agency said Tuesday. It will cover overseas-issued documents submitted for both health insurance enrollment and dependent registration. The move follows rec

South Korea is bracing for a sharp cooldown this week after Seoul recorded its hottest mid-October day in 119 years on Monday, reaching 29.8 degrees Celcius and surpassing a record set just a day earlier. But morning temperatures are expected to drop to single digits in some regions from Wednesday. According to the Korea Meteorological Administration, cold air moving in from the north will bring a marked drop in temperatures from Tuesday onward. Morning lows are expected to fall to 6-14 degrees

Korea’s push to rebuild medical care outside the capital faces a persistent challenge — regional hospitals have struggled to restore services disrupted by the government-doctor standoff, while training new specialists will take years. Data released Tuesday showed average bed occupancy at nine national university hospitals outside the Seoul area remained at 56.4 percent in 2025, unchanged from 2024 and well below 73.6 percent in 2023. Surgical volumes also remained sharply below pre-dispute level

Facing a projected shortage of nearly 1 million care workers in the coming decades, South Korea plans to use robots and artificial intelligence monitoring systems to help fill gaps in care for its aging population, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Tuesday. Pilot programs will begin next year in more than 400 households in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and Mokpo and Yeongam, South Jeolla Province, alongside trials of AI welfare consultations in 10 regions. "AI is not meant to replace people

Active use of social media may have a bigger impact on the loneliness of those aged at least 60, a South Korean study has found. A statistically significant correlation was found between social media use and the tendency to feel lonely in this age group, according to research led by Min Kyoung-bok, a professor of preventive medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine. Min’s team analyzed data from 34,142 Seoul residents aged 20 and older, collected through the 2024 Seoul Survey. Th

South Korea is getting a distinctly autumnal start to October, with temperatures dropping by as much as 5-6 degrees Celsius Thursday as cold air moved in from the north ahead of the three-day weekend. Seoul’s daytime high was expected to reach just 20-21 degrees, down significantly from the 27-28 degrees recorded earlier in the week. Across the country, daytime temperatures also fell noticeably. In Gangneung, Gangwon Province, the daytime high dropped to 22 degrees Thursday from 29 degrees the p

Patients with rare or neglected cancers in Korea will face lower drug costs and gain greater access to treatment from Friday, as national health insurance coverage expands, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Wednesday. The expansion covers Retevmo for rare cancers caused by genetic alterations, Vyloy for unresectable advanced or metastatic stomach cancer, and a first-line combination of Padcev and Keytruda, two cancer drugs from different pharmaceutical companies, for urothelial cancer. The

Reports of adverse events following growth hormone injections in children approached 2,000 in Korea last year as use of the drugs continued to increase, government data cited by a lawmaker showed Monday. The number of reports rose from 1,189 in 2021 to 1,910 in 2025, according to Ministry of Food and Drug Safety data obtained by Rep. Heo Jong-sik of the Democratic Party of Korea. The figures do not establish that growth hormone injections caused the reported conditions. An adverse event report r