Pastor Lee Young-hoon of Yoido Full Gospel Church "Plan to Establish People's Hospitals in 260 North Korean Military Units"

Senior Pastor Lee Young-hoon of Yoido Full Gospel Church is speaking at a press conference held on the 14th at a hotel in downtown Seoul.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo Mideum] Pastor Lee Young-hoon, the senior pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, announced plans to establish people's hospitals in North Korea.

At a press conference on the 14th, Pastor Lee stated, "After completing the so-called 'Jo Yong-gi Heart Specialist Hospital' (hereinafter Pyongyang Heart Hospital) in North Korea, there has been a request from the North to build 'People's Hospitals' in 260 counties within North Korea," adding, "The Protestant community will form a consortium to proceed with building people's hospitals as the next project."

He said, "The most severe issue in rural North Korea is the lack of hospitals and medicine," and added, "The documents sent by the North included a request to establish people's hospitals in 260 counties and to provide necessary medical supplies."

The Pyongyang Heart Hospital began construction in December 2007 in the center of Pyongyang with a capacity of 260 beds. Construction was halted in 2010 due to the government's 5·24 sanctions against North Korea following the Cheonan ship sinking incident. However, construction resumed last November after the United Nations (UN) Security Council's North Korea Sanctions Committee approved the import of 1,500 medical devices and supplies to North Korea. If there are no internal issues in North Korea, it is expected to take six months to complete.

The people's hospitals to be built afterward will be small hospitals larger than health clinics, with construction costs of about $100,000 (approximately 130 million KRW) per location. The total project scale amounts to 34 billion KRW.

Meanwhile, Pastor Lee also expressed his intention to support domestic small business owners and low-income groups struggling due to COVID-19. Pointing out the insufficiency of government support, he said, "If you do not sell 3 million KRW per month, there is no record of paying taxes, so you cannot receive government subsidies. These are the people who are truly struggling." He added, "Our church has distributed about 10.6 billion KRW to those in need based on applications. We plan to provide an additional 5 billion KRW before this year's Chuseok holiday."

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