Over 5 Years, 800 Doctors Involved in Sexual Crimes Like Rape and Illegal Filming... Only 4 License Suspensions

Including Oriental Medicine Doctors and Dentists, an Average of 159 People Annually
Revised Medical Law Enforced from November... "Questioning Its Effectiveness"

It has been identified that 800 doctors have been arrested for sex crimes over the past five years. Most of these sex crimes were rape or sexual assault.

According to data received by Nam In-soon, a member of the National Assembly’s Health and Welfare Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, from the National Police Agency on the 31st, the number of doctors (including Korean medicine doctors and dentists) arrested for sex crimes from 2018 to 2022 was 793. By year, there were 163 in 2018, 147 in 2019, 155 in 2020, 168 in 2021, and 160 in 2022, averaging 159 per year.

By type, doctors arrested for rape or sexual assault accounted for the largest number at 689 (86.9%), followed by illegal filming using cameras, etc., at 80 (10.1%), obscene acts using communication media at 19 cases (2.4%), and intrusion into public places for sexual purposes at 5 (0.6%).

As calls for strong sanctions such as revoking the licenses of medical professionals who commit sex crimes have grown louder, the National Assembly has also significantly revised regulations on medical licenses.

According to the amended Medical Service Act, which took effect last November, if a medical professional commits a crime and is sentenced to imprisonment or higher, their license will be revoked. The disqualification grounds have been expanded to include all crimes punishable by imprisonment or higher (including suspended sentences and deferred sentences, excluding unintentional medical accidents causing death or injury due to negligence).

Previously, licenses were revoked only when sentenced to imprisonment or higher for violations of medical-related laws. Although there was a provision allowing suspension of qualifications for “acts that severely damage the dignity of medical professionals,” only four cases of license suspension due to sex crimes occurred from 2014 to 2018. Moreover, the punishment was limited to a one-month suspension.

However, there are concerns that effective punishment for medical professionals who commit sex crimes may still be difficult under the revised Medical Service Act. This is because the special nature of medical work may lead to leniency, making it unlikely for imprisonment or higher sentences to be imposed.

Park Hyun-jung, an invited professor at the Department of Law at Chosun University, pointed out in a recent paper that it is difficult for patients to recognize sex crimes, that trust between doctor and patient can be abused, and that collecting evidence or proving the crime is challenging?these are risk factors in medical professional sex crime cases. She also noted, “Due to a lack of medical knowledge in criminal justice agencies, it is not easy to distinguish between medical acts and criminal acts, making proof difficult.”

Professor Park emphasized, “Legal sanctions considering the special nature of medical professionals and institutional measures by medical professional organizations must be established.”

Meanwhile, the amended Medical Service Act mandating the installation of closed-circuit television (CCTV) in operating rooms has been in effect since September this year. The Korean Medical Association strongly opposed this, arguing that “CCTV filming inevitably involves contact with the patient’s body and could be mistaken for a sex crime.”

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