A political storm is brewing over the fate of a 103-year-old public hospital in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province, which faces a forced closure due to its chronic operational deficit.

Kicking up the storm is Hong Joon-pyo, former chairman of the ruling Saenuri Party, who was elected the province’s governor in December. The pushy politician is determined to shut down the nation’s second-oldest public hospital despite calls for caution from the central government.

Under Hong’s instruction, the provincial government announced last week that the Jinju Medical Center would be closed for a month until May 2, before being shut down permanently thereafter.

The announcement highlighted the hospital’s untenable financial situation. Last year, it incurred a 6.9 billion won operational loss, boosting its accumulated deficit to 27.9 billion won. If the current trend continues, the hospital is expected to have its 33 billion won in capital completely wiped out in a few years.

Hong laid the blame on the JMC’s trade union, saying that it has for years ignored the repeated demands from the province’s government and council that it cooperate in restructuring the overstaffed hospital.

But Hong’s decision has triggered an outcry from opposition parties as well as trade unions. They denounce it as a step that would further endanger the nation’s already weak system of public health and medical services.

In Korea, public hospitals account for a mere 10.4 percent of the total hospital beds. This is much lower compared with 95.8 percent in Great Britain, 65 percent in France, 41 percent in Germany, 36 percent in Japan and 33 percent in the United States.

Critics argue that if operational losses are the main reason for closing the JMC, many of the nation’s 34 provincial public medical centers would have to be shut down as well because they are in a similar situation.

They also note that Hong’s decision runs afoul of President Park Geun-hye’s campaign promise to enhance the standard of public health and medical services.

Hong counters that the closure of the JMC would not undermine the nation’s public medical service system. Rather, he argues that savings from the shutdown of the poorly managed institution will help him provide higher-quality services to the residents through better equipped private hospitals.

In making the controversial decision, Hong resorts to a revised law on public health and medical services, which went into effect in February. The amended law states that a local government as well as the central government can enter into an agreement with a private medical institution and provide necessary assistance for it to carry out a public health and medical service program.

The revised law reflects a shift in government approach. Until recently, the government has sought to increase the number of beds at public hospitals to expand public health and medical services.

But this type of investment was deemed superfluous, given Korea’s already high ratio of hospital bed to population. According to the OECD, Korea had 8.7 acute care hospital beds per 1,000 people in 2010, one of the highest ratios in the world and much higher than the OECD average of 5.0.

The new approach hence calls for the government to shift the focus from building more public hospitals to making private hospitals function more like public institutions by providing them with assistance in technology, human resources and financing.

While the new approach makes sense, it does not necessarily imply that the central or local governments no longer have to invest in public health and medical institutions.

Regional medical centers still deserve support as they are the backbone in delivering public health care and medical services. That’s why the Ministry of Health and Welfare has sought to prevent Hong from closing the old public hospital in Jinju, but to no avail.

Today, the assembly of South Gyeongsang Province discusses the issue. It will review whether Hong has followed proper procedures in announcing the shutdown of the JMC and whether there are alternatives to its closure.

We hope the province’s government and assembly avoid the folly of abolishing the public hospital just because of its labor problems. They need to talk with the hospital’s trade union before rushing to abolish it. The union in turn should be more flexible about restructuring.