Baek Hospital on the Brink of Closure... 'Foreigners-Only Hospital' Faces One Challenge After Another

Patient Care Ends on 31st Next Month
Seoul City Strives to Resolve Medical Service Gaps

Seoul Baek Hospital, the only university hospital remaining in downtown Seoul, announced that it will close by the end of next month, drawing attention to plans for addressing the future medical service gap in downtown Seoul. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has announced plans to designate the Baek Hospital site exclusively for medical facilities. However, even if the Seoul city plan proceeds as intended, it is expected to take more than six months to complete the related procedures. Separately, descendants of the hospital’s founder have proposed transforming the existing Baek Hospital into a specialized hospital for foreign tourists. However, this plan also faces many obstacles to realization, and confusion is expected to continue.

On the 20th, when the board meeting regarding the closure of Seoul Baek Hospital was held, employees opposing the closure held placards at Baek Hospital in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Dongju Yoon doso7@

On the 20th of last month, Inje Academy held a board meeting at Baek Hospital in Jung-gu, Seoul, where the management normalization task force’s proposal to close Seoul Baek Hospital was approved. Since first recording a loss of 7.3 billion KRW in 2004, Baek Hospital has accumulated a deficit of 174.5 billion KRW to date.

According to the closure plan for Seoul Baek Hospital, patient treatment will end on the 31st of next month, and inpatients will be transferred to other hospitals. The hospital’s interns and residents will be reassigned to other hospitals affiliated with the Baek Hospital group.

Currently, representatives of Baek Hospital alumni, labor unions, and professors oppose the closure. On the 3rd, Baek Jin-kyung, a professor in the Department of Multimedia at Inje University and a descendant of Baek In-je, the hospital’s founder, met with Kang Cheol-won, Seoul’s Deputy Mayor for Political Affairs, and reporters at Seoul City Hall to oppose the closure and proposed turning Baek Hospital into a ‘Global K-Medical Hub.’

After the meeting with the Deputy Mayor, Professor Baek told reporters, “According to the intention of Baek In-je, who founded this hospital, closing the hospital due to deficits is not desirable.”

He further argued that the hospital’s location adjacent to Myeongdong, a popular tourist area, should be leveraged to specialize the facility as a medical center for tourists, equipped with telemedicine and emergency services. He said, “It is the optimal location to establish a K-medical service center offering health checkups for foreign tourists,” and added, “We have conveyed to the Seoul Metropolitan Government a plan to inherit the history of Baek Hospital, Korea’s first private medical corporation, and develop it into a K-Medical hospital.”

However, even if Professor Baek’s proposal is followed, there are many barriers to its realization. First, if Baek Hospital becomes a ‘foreigners-only hospital,’ it would contradict the Seoul city plan’s intent to use the site solely for medical facilities to resolve the local medical service gap.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government has taken a firm stance against allowing the Baek Hospital site to be converted for commercial use, citing concerns over medical service gaps following the closure decision. Jung-gu District Office is currently processing the paperwork to designate the Baek Hospital site as an urban planning facility. Once the documents are completed and submitted to Seoul city, the site will be designated as an urban planning facility based on the decision of the Seoul City Urban Planning Committee. However, this process is expected to take at least six months, meaning the designation will likely only be possible by the end of the year. Seoul city has not engaged in detailed discussions regarding Professor Baek’s proposal.

The election for the president of Inje University is also a key factor. Professor Baek has expressed his intention to run in the upcoming presidential election next month. The ‘Global K-Medical Hub’ conversion plan is solely Professor Baek’s proposal, and Inje Academy has not yet changed its position regarding the hospital’s closure. Therefore, how Inje Academy’s stance will be resolved depending on the election outcome is expected to be crucial.

Among those opposing the closure, since the proposal to convert Baek Hospital into a foreigners-only hospital is still just an idea, there is a sentiment to wait and see. Lee Jun-tae, Secretary-General of the Seoul Regional Headquarters of the Health and Medical Workers’ Union, said, “Various proposals are emerging, but nothing has been definitively decided,” adding, “Our immediate goal is to prevent the closure of Baek Hospital.”

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