Im Gyeong-su, director of the Gobu Community Health Subcenter in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province. [Jeongeup City]
Im Gyeong-su, director of the Gobu Community Health Subcenter in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province. [Jeongeup City]

A doctor who walked away from a hospital directorship paying 400 million won ($273,000) a year after retiring from Asan Medical Center has drawn widespread attention for choosing instead to practice at a small rural health subcenter in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province, for less than 3 million won ($1,990) a month.

The story of Im Gyeong-su, who spent more than 30 years as an emergency medicine professor before taking up the post of director at the Gobu-myeon Community Health Subcenter in Jeongeup, was featured in a recently broadcast YTN program titled "Romantic Doctor Im — A Physician Who Came to the Countryside."

Im is widely regarded as one of the physicians who laid the foundations of South Korea's emergency medical system. In 1994, he co-drafted the initial legislation for the Emergency Medical Services Act alongside Park Yun-hyeong, a former endowed chair professor at Soonchunhyang University, helping to build up a then-underdeveloped field.

After stepping down as director of Jeongeup Asan Hospital in September 2024, Im moved to the Gobu-myeon subcenter just two months later, in November of that year. A physician of his standing in emergency medicine could have commanded an annual salary of at least 400 million won, yet he chose the path of a public health doctor earning less than 3 million won a month.

Im stays in Jeongeup from Monday through Thursday each week, seeing patients from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. His living quarters are a rooftop room of just over 13 square meters on the second floor of the health center.

In a rural village with no private clinic, no pharmacy and limited public transportation, Im sees more than 20 patients a day — most of them men and women in their 70s and 80s living with hypertension, diabetes or arthritis. He handles everything himself, from calling patients by name to walking them to the examination room.

Im said the state of rural health care is deteriorating. "The combined area of Jeongeup's 14 townships is roughly the size of Seoul," he said. "Across all 14 townships, I am the only doctor. Until last month there were six public health physicians — they all left, and now I'm the only one. Who would believe you if you said there was just one doctor for all of Seoul?"

He went on to describe a stark gap in healthy life expectancy between urban and rural areas. "Life expectancy is roughly the same no matter where you live in this country," he said. "But healthy life expectancy is around 70 in the greater metropolitan area and only 63 in rural and fishing communities — a difference of seven full years."

Im particularly stressed the importance of primary care. "If primary care stops functioning properly, conditions worsen into serious illness, and ultimately the entire emergency and essential medical system collapses," he said. "WHO also considers primary care one of the most important obligations a government must fulfill."

As the only doctor left in the area, Im said he hopes to remain by his patients' side for as long as possible. "I used to think happiness meant earning a lot of money, traveling the world and spending every last bit of it," he said. "But the romance I feel now is living quietly — tending to plants and a cat, listening to migratory birds pass through in spring and autumn."

He added: "If I'm given even a little more time to help these people, I want to stay healthy and remain by my patients' side for as long as I can."


bbo@heraldcorp.com