The government’s plan to allow telemedicine has been met by vehement opposition, most notably from Korean doctors and the Korean Medical Association (KMA). KMA has claimed that there are three main problems with telemedicine, the first being whether or not proper medical care can be provided. When a doctor conducts a face-to-face medical examination, they use their sense of sight, sound, and touch to diagnose a patient. However, with telemedicine, doctors will have to rely on a computer monitor that may provide poor image resolution or sound quality. Additionally, telemedical devices may malfunction or patients may fail to use them properly, resulting in faulty data. If misdiagnosis results due to such factors, it becomes ambiguous whether the doctor should be held accountable. KMA also pointed out that an examination could become much more time-consuming. For example, if a patient were to suffer from a skin infection, he or she would have to setup a computer, make an appointment, connect to a doctor, and if there is an infection, take a picture of the infected area and send it over the Internet, which could take more than 20 minutes. A follow-up direct examination would cost the patient even more time and money.

 

KMA is also concerned about patients flocking to large-scale general hospitals. They believe that if telemedicine is put into practice, all patients will want to be examined by only famous doctors at renowned hospitals. This could cause local clinics and rural hospitals that have relied on geographic proximity to stay open to go out of business, leading to the loss of up to 50,000 jobs, and exacerbate the already uneven geographic distribution of medical centers in the country. Direct medical accessibility for many patients could plummet, and health inequalities could in fact increase. Some other fears that medical professionals have expressed include the diminishing of the nursing profession and the closing of many pharmacies due to the possibility that patients will prefer to have medicine delivered to their doorsteps.

 

One of the government’s strongest arguments for the introduction of telemedicine is to provide medical care for elderly patients in rural areas. They also made claims that because telemedicine simply requires the use of computers or smartphones that are already present in many households, it will not incur a large cost. However, according to statistics from the Korea Communications Commission, no more than 53 percent of farming and fishing communities that consist of less than 50 families have access to broadband as of 2013. Additionally, even if the government were to provide computers or smartphones to the elderly residents who make up the majority of the population in such communities, most are unfamiliar with such technology, and it is questionable how well they will adapt to telemedicine considering the rate of computer illiteracy there. Older patients are also afflicted with several different health problems, and are at risk for many diseases. With telemedicine, it could be very difficult to diagnose such diseases at early stages, and consulting doctors for multiple ailments may become more complicated and costly.

 

There have also been suspicions that the government’s endorsement of telemedicine is largely driven by the interests of conglomerates and information technology (IT) giants such as Samsung, LG, and SK. Big companies have already been planning telemedicine-related projects and have established partnerships with large general hospitals. Samsung plans to make investments worth 23 trillion Korean Won by 2020 in health and medical equipment, and Samsung Electronics made an announcement that medicine and healthcare is to become their new growth engine shortly after President Geun-hye Park’s administration submitted a bill lifting the prohibition on telemedicine to the National Assembly, further raising eyebrows. According to the independent non-profit media organization Newstapa (also called the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism), telemedical setup equipment called “gateway” must be installed to put telemedicine into practice, and these setup boxes are manufactured by large companies, such as Samsung. The target group of patients treated through telemedicine mainly suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, or mental illness. Even if the gateway equipment that is estimated to cost around 420,000 Korean Won are just sold to the 7 million people who are currently being treated for these diseases, it could generate revenue of nearly 3 trillion Korean Won.

 

A civic group, formed to prevent the privatization of medicine and commercialization of hospitals, stated that by passing the telemedicine law, the government “ignored the needs and concerns of Korean citizens in order to open a new market for the chaebol (family-controlled industrial conglomerate).” The group further stressed, “Though the government may call telemedicine ‘medical advancement,’ it is in fact a ‘policy to feed the chaebol.’”