By I never had any the ROK Army personnel I have worked with over the years complain about their health care but apparently there has been some recent issues with Korean military health care:
In the wake of medical accidents in the military stemming from late treatment and misdiagnosis, the National Assembly and the government have stepped up efforts to reform medical practices in the armed forces.Won Yoo-cheol, head of the National Assembly`s National Defense Committee, told a parliamentary briefing Friday, “Makeshift countermeasures can no longer protect the lives of our sons and reform the non-performing military medical care system,” adding, “Along with members of the national defense committee from the ruling and opposition parties, I will immediately set up a fact-finding sub-committee on medical accidents in the military.”
Won also promised to discuss with committee members the establishment of a military medical school to improve military medical care and expand the supply of medical specialists. He also pledged more defense budget to hire more civilian doctors and secure long-serving military medics.
Talking to The Dong-A Ilbo over the phone, he said, “Parents who have children in the military are very worried due to recent media coverage of medical accidents in the military. We`ve received many calls urging action against these accidents.” [Donga Ilbo]
The way I look at is if people are going to serve their country in the armed forces they should at least expect the best health care possible especially when you have a draftee military like South Korea. I’m confident that whatever issues they have the ROK government will get them resolved.
She hasn’t seen...
3:54 am on May 18th, 2011 1
I’ve just come up on the 1 year anniversary of spending 2 weeks in Gangwondo National University Hospital with a smashed hip and broken femur.
I can’t complain about the treatment – except they don’t believe in morphine. I would have killed for it the first day. (Broke the same leg in 1st grade – and now have confirmed, x-ray techs are sadists.)
4:23 am on May 18th, 2011 2
My brother-in-law was injured while on active duty with the ROK Marine Corps (this was a few years back – 1994 or 95). He had an eye injury that needed some serious surgery and my wife and I came to see him from the US. The ‘hospital’ that he was being treated in was, at that time, touted as the ROK Central Military Medical Center and supposedly the best there was in the military system. Without going on for days, what I can tell you is the place had the appearance something out of a horror movie and the care he got seemed to match, since he has no sight in that eye to this day.
Of course, things have come a long way for medical treatment here in Korea. I have used Samsung Medical Center frequently and much prefer it to any US military medical facility (and possibly some civilian hospitals in the US), but I’m not sure how far the military system has come since seeing what I observed almost 20 years ago. I would guess that a lot of money needs to be spent to bring things up to snuff, since, many times, the prevailing attitude of the ‘draft’ ROK military system is just to ‘deal with it for the 2 years you’ve got to serve.’
If anyone has recently been to a ROK military medical facility and can shed some (current) light on this, I think that would prove interesting…
7:35 am on May 18th, 2011 3
I was at Samsung Medical Center in 1999. Even if it was over 12 years ago, It was still far more advanced than what I had ever saw in any of the hospitals I’ve ever seen in the West. They also had service in English for foreign patients with very reasonable affordable prices, and you didn’t have to wait in long lines either.
7:35 am on May 18th, 2011 4
But then again I’m just a Chinese agitprop, what do I know anything about Korea?
9:03 am on May 18th, 2011 5
#4 True you are. You have also demonstrated on many occasions that you don’t know Korea as well as even a 1 year English teacher might.
Have you decided to tell the truth? This is man bites dog level.
9:30 am on May 18th, 2011 6
How dare you to compare me with an English teacher? That is hitting way below the belt.
10:26 am on May 18th, 2011 7
Not only the medical system but the medivac system is SK military is lacking too. I think about 5 – 6 years ago a soldier needed urgent care and a SK army medivac chopper was called out. In bad weather the old Huey, which didn’t have a modern navigation system, flew into side of a mountain and all onboard were killed. I think cause of the accident was basically not having modern navigation/terrain-avoidance system.
One medical staff onboard was an army female nurse (or doctor) who was married to another doctor in the SK army. She had just given birth to a baby who was a few months old at the time of the accident. I remember seeing the sad picture of the widowed dad saluting her coffin, while holding the baby in the other arm.
I hear the joke is that (and I read it really happens) even though a soldier may be lying down in pain due to appendix, when he hears that a medivac chopper is coming to get him, he sits up and claims he’s fine. He’d rather suffer in pain than get onboard the old Huey.
You also won’t find many armored medical vehicles or other such luxuries in SK.
Thankfully SK now has the $ to fix the issue. Hopefully.
11:18 am on May 18th, 2011 8
Tom, if you think that twelve years ago Samsung Medical Center “had service in English for foreign patients with very reasonable affordable prices,” then you do not know what you’re talking about.
The Samsung International Clinic was a bit of a money-skimming scam and my organization reported them to the Korea National Health Insurance Corporation because they refused to take legal resident foreign patients who had the Korean health insurance. I’m not sure if that is still the case. My two situations where I received treatment there were both completely in Korean through the regular channels of treatment all South Koreans use.
I don’t doubt, Tom, that you have visited Samsung Medical Center in 1999.
12:06 pm on May 18th, 2011 9
Tom proves once again that he’s completely out of it. And Kushibo hit #8 right over the center field wall…
12:13 pm on May 18th, 2011 10
#8 how could I have visited Samsung Medical Center when I’m in Tianjin or Beijing?
You are being totally unreasonable here.
12:41 pm on May 18th, 2011 11
Oh, geez! You’re right! What a huge gaping hole in my theory!
Well, for starters, right now you’re in Toronto. Nobody has called you back to the home country for debriefing. Not yet, anyway. Oh, won’t that day ever suck. Eh, Tom?
Anyhoo, there are these things called exchange tours (though sometimes they’re just one way), and groups of Chinese (as well as people from other countries) go on fact-finding (sometimes technology-stealing) tours of various facilities in an area or in a field of study.
That someone from China would have been part of a group that was given a tour of Samsung Medical Center is not only a given, it’s a fact. I’ve helped arrange such things for people from Japan, and I know for a fact Samsung Medical Center has “partnerships” with one or more hospitals in China.
What you wrote about Samsung Med Center sounds like something someone read from online or heard from a tour.
1:11 pm on May 18th, 2011 12
Why would the Chinese government waste tons of money to keep someone in Canada to troll the ROKDROP blogs when there’s hardly any Koreans and just a lot of ex-military on here anyway? It seems like a total waste of resources to me and a ludicrous assignment. I mean, I just don’t see a government targeting this blog with such a stupid plan and having the psychological operations community feed talking points to a guy in Canada. Sorry Kushibo but the whole agitprop theory has sounded like paranoia the whole time for me. If you’ve got examples where the Chinese have been caught doing the exact same thing or something really similar – and I mean that would make this believable/plausible, let me know.
Regarding the original blog post, and also remarks by the think tank former marine Dick, errr Frick – we’ve got a lot of medical claims – a majority legitimate but some bogus – that will keep eating away at the budget long after the GWOT is over. It kind of sucks politicians don’t think about the long term cost of paying for putting people in harms way until it starts getting politically inconvenient. Anyway, I’m wondering why GI Korea is so confident that the Korean government will figure out how to fund really good healthcare for a conscript army.
GI Korea – do you have numbers as far as the budget goes to back up your confidence in them solving it? I just don’t see it right now, but some empirical data would really help me understand your confidence.
1:37 pm on May 18th, 2011 13
Kushibo has an answer for everything!
3:32 pm on May 18th, 2011 14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mzJhvC-8E&feature=player_embedded
Let’s see your certificate of Long Form Birth Certificate and equivalent Hulk Hogan like theme song Tom.
3:55 pm on May 18th, 2011 15
Tom has a feeble comeback for everything when his official bio is called into question.
To review: Tom is in Toronto, not Korea. Tom fudged the dates he claimed he was a KATUSA. Tom cannot does not know the name of the hospital he was born in. Tom cannot identify what was far and away the most prominent building in the neighborhood he claimed to have lived in at the time he claimed to have lived there, but made attempts to guess other buildings that were not even there at the time. Tom repeatedly calls for Korea to drop its US ally that has helped insure it safety and security for six decades and instead embrace China. Tom’s views on how Korea should cozy up to China are atypical and anachronistic.
Tom’s official bio is, almost without question, made-up lies. Who he is is another matter. Is he Beijing agitprop? Having met people who actually do this, as part of their duties for their government-sponsored study abroad, I think this is a very real possibility.
Is Tom a Mizar-like entity who for whatever reason is trying to foment anti-Korean sentiment in the most popular USFK-related blog? That’s possible, too. An anti-alliance American who loathes the military, perhaps, or some former English teacher who was so jaded and injured by listening to loudmouth Korean nationalists in his evening classes that he parrots their silliness, circa 1999, as a way to parody them and get back at them? That’s possible, as well (though I doubt he is Mizar himself).
It’s also possible that Tom is a South Korean national or kyopo who has been studying in Canada for quite some time, and he is just cluelessly out of touch with Korean society or what Koreans typically think. But this would not explain the mistakes and lies in his bio.
At any rate, Tom is clearly someone who does not represent a typical South Korean national in any way and should be disregarded when he tries to present himself as such. He is here to foment animosity, the very definition of a troll.
4:28 pm on May 18th, 2011 16
#14
BOOM, Head Shot.
Target goes down.
4:44 pm on May 18th, 2011 17
John#15, Kushibo#14 was one between the eyes and two in the groin…
4:52 pm on May 18th, 2011 18
kushibo 14, I don’t understand the reference to Mizar. The repository of all knowledge lists nine possibilities:
star in the Big Dipper
mathematical language
flying car
US Navy ship
Macedonian rock band
solo musician in the US
hill in Psalm 42
antagonist in Jet Force Gemini
character in The Sandman: Endless Nights
5:30 pm on May 18th, 2011 19
It works like this.
1. Ignore it completely.
2. It will become completely disruptive and irritating.
3. Continue ignoring it.
4. It will go away.
5. It will come back time to time looking for a response.
6. Keep ignoring it.
7. It will vanish.
5:32 pm on May 18th, 2011 20
Glans, Mizar5 (also MizarV, Mizar, and various forms) was a prominent member of the Marmot’s Hole commentariat for many years, until December of 2009. He was noted for his references of “we Koreans” and “us Koreans” (an example here), and he insisted he grew up in the Kyŏngsang region and then moved to New York and came back to Korea and realized what a sh¡thole it was and what crappy people “we Koreans” really are.
Basically he painted himself as a Korean who had found the light and realized what terrible people “we Koreans” are and how horrible “our country” and “our culture” really are. And the sooner “we Koreans” realize this, the better off “we Koreans” would be.
I and a few others noted holes in his bio, as well as some odd Romanizations that didn’t really match what a native Korean speaker would produce. There were questions and doubts, and over time fewer people believed the bio but he would still use that platform to bash Koreans on a regular basis.
Finally, in a famous incident I discuss HERE he was outed when self-posted pictures of himself (including, apparently, fellating himself) were discovered and it was clear that he could not be the 100% Korean from Kyŏngsang he’d made himself out to be.
He was a troll, by his own admission posting things to get a rise out of other people. That is one similarity with Tom, but the main similarity, if the Mizar description in #14 were true, is the dedication to a fake identity from which to troll and whip up animosity and bother people.
5:38 pm on May 18th, 2011 21
ChickenHead (#18), yours is wishful thinking. For starters, it only works if someone is not actually earning something by trolling.
Second, it utterly relies on the extremely flimsy premise that everyone will follow suit and ignore the troll, something that becomes ever more unlikely the more participants you have.
Finally, I am less concerned about banishing a troll (that’s up to GI Korea and GI Korea alone) than I am about countering disinformation.
Tom was once taken seriously here as a typical South Korean with typical South Korean views, something that was, I believe, detrimental to a lot of different things. Now, however, far fewer people seem to take what he writes seriously in that way. That is a victory.
6:08 pm on May 18th, 2011 22
Doctor’s in S. Korea – It’s largely being taken over by females – “woman’s job”, males don’t want to be doctor’s so I guess they’ll find women to treat the ROK Marine Corp = Coming soon: Men sexually assaulting female doctors.
2:49 am on May 19th, 2011 23
Wow Kushibo, how long did it take you to write those entire essays on Tom, not just one but two, three?
You could have just said one sentence, and it would have been enough. “Tom is a troll”. 
What you write are all bunch of nonsense. Your attempt to pull up another poster in another blog and trying to pin him on me is also amusing.
I am a Korean, I stick by it, and I’ve proven it time in and time again. But you refuse to be objective about it, always looking for holes where none exist and coming up with holes that you think will discredit me.
Now let me ask you about your credentials. You are a white foreigner guy from America, what makes you think you’re the spokesman for Korea? Korea doesn’t need you as a voice. You’re just a loser ESL teacher, nobody takes you seriously.
Try as hard as you might, but look in the mirror white guy, you’re a white guy, you don’t look Korean. I’m sure that bugs you because you desperately want to be Korean but you can’t be. 
3:24 am on May 19th, 2011 24
Tom, saying something over and over and over again is not the same as “proving” it. You have no more “proven” you are Korean than I have proven that you are from Tianjin.
As for the rest, Tom, stop obfuscating. As usual, you’re trying to deflect and distract, which is all the more reason to believe that #14 is on the money. You can keep saying it’s all a “bunch of nonsense,” but all you’ve got is denial to match up against objective analysis. There are holes, your insistence the holes are not really holes notwithstanding.
Another obfuscation of yours. I didn’t say you were Mizar5; in fact I think I said it was likely you were not. I only pointed out a K-blog type — a poseur whose mission is to whip up animosity — that was relevant to the discussion.
As for my credentials, your remark notwithstanding, I do not claim to be a spokesman for Korea. I wouldn’t be one even if I claimed to be one. You are also wrong that I am an ESL teacher or that that’s what I was doing when I left Seoul for Hawaii. And my blue eyes in my own avatar would tend to indicate that I have Caucasian blood flowing through my veins; it’s certainly not a secret… since it’s my avatar. My connection to Korea, however, you are way off the mark.
But then again, it doesn’t matter, because unlike you, I am not claiming to represent South Koreans in general through my own opinion. Through friends and relatives and coworkers in Korea, not to mention my own informed experiences and interactions, I have a pretty good feel for what is going on, bolstered by my own graduate studies in Korea, and when it comes down to it I am probably far better at representing and describing what’s going on than most people in the K-blogosphere. Sorry if that sounds arrogant, but I think I can make a good case for it.
But even though I think such haughty thoughts about myself, I am no spokesman for Korea, nor do I claim to be. Just one other thing you get wrong.
Tom, you’re a troll on a mission to whip up animosity, and there is little if anything factual about your bio. All I’m doing is pointing that out to mitigate the damage while you’re here.
4:56 am on May 19th, 2011 25
“Tom, you’re a troll on a mission to whip up animosity”
Wrong there, buddy. The animosity was already there way before I showed up. That is, animosity by GI/ESL teachers towards Koreans. So why I can’t say my low opinions of you guys, when you guys have no problems saying your low opinions of Koreans?
“because unlike you, I am not claiming to represent South Koreans in general through my own opinion.”
Yes you are always claiming such. You keep saying Koreans would never think like this and that and this and that, so Tom can’t possibly be a Korean. As if there is one one great Korean opinion, and if a person doesn’t have that same opinion then he can’t be Korean. That is just insulting to Koreans like me, and you don’t even realize how you’re stereotyping Koreans.
I know your history more then you realize. 
I have never said I represent all Koreans nor did I said I was a spokesman for Korea. Prove it white foreigner. You are a white guy, you have no stake in Korea, and since you have no plan to live in Korea forever until death, you have no right as a Korean to speak for Korea. The apartment you own in Korea? pfffttt.. it doesn’t matter, it’s an investment you bought to make money, and later you will cash that in and spend the money in America. It’s an investment, nothing more. It doesn’t give you any right to represent Korean views or pretend that you’re even part of Korea. You have zero angle in Korea. So you went to Sogang University in Korea during the mid 90′s, and some Korean American guy tried to hunt you down because of an internet dispute and he almost succeeded when he contacted your school and started harassing you.
5:38 am on May 19th, 2011 26
#18 too true!
ALthough, I am learning a lot reading Kushibo’s responses. Pretty interesting.
I just don’t bother to read the posts from the Canadian Chinese boy.
6:59 am on May 19th, 2011 27
^ Oh hi Kushibo!
8:22 am on May 19th, 2011 28
BTW, plumbers are expensive… Just ask Nixon…