Nearly eight years after a psychiatrist’s murder prompted South Korea to pass a new law that increased penalties for assaulting medical staff, another attack this month has doctors asking why the country’s hospitals are still unsafe.
The attack at Severance Hospital in Seoul last Wednesday left the victim, a psychiatry professor surnamed Kang, with a severe hand injury that required surgery and cuts to his face and head.
South Korea’s leading medical bodies have called for urgent new security measures inside hospitals in the wake of the incident, arguing that the current legal regime has failed to prevent violence against staff.