"A city of 850,000 needs both a hospital and a medical school"

Officials issue a joint statement at Suncheon City Hall on Sunday. From left: Shin Min-ho, a special city assembly member; Rep. Kwon Hyang-yeop; Rep. Kim Moon-su; Mayor Son Hun-mo; Suncheon City Council Speaker Yu Yeong-cheol; and Kim Jeong-hui, a special city assembly member. [Photo: Suncheon City]
Officials issue a joint statement at Suncheon City Hall on Sunday. From left: Shin Min-ho, a special city assembly member; Rep. Kwon Hyang-yeop; Rep. Kim Moon-su; Mayor Son Hun-mo; Suncheon City Council Speaker Yu Yeong-cheol; and Kim Jeong-hui, a special city assembly member. [Photo: Suncheon City]

Sunchon National University and local civic leaders have declared that any plan to establish a medical school in South Jeolla Province must include both a medical school and a teaching hospital at Suncheon — pushing back against a compromise proposal that would place the medical school at Mokpo National University while sending only a hospital to Suncheon. The proposal came from the transition committee of the Gwangju-South Jeolla integrated special city, which has been mediating a merger of the two national universities.

Suncheon Mayor Son Hun-mo, National Assembly members Kim Moon-su and Kwon Hyang-yeop, and members of both the Suncheon City Council and the Suncheon-district seats of the integrated special city assembly issued a joint statement Sunday urging that "a medical school and teaching hospital at Sunchon National University must be established together to guarantee the right to life of 850,000 citizens in the eastern region and to address the critical shortage of essential medical services."

The signatories said the eastern South Jeolla region has a dense population and heavy industrial presence that generates high demand for critical, emergency and essential care, yet lacks both a national university hospital and a tertiary general hospital — forcing seriously ill and emergency patients to travel long distances to Gwangju or the greater Seoul area.

They added that a national medical school and its affiliated teaching hospital form an inseparable public health infrastructure — linking physician training, clinical education and the treatment of critical and emergency patients — and that decisions on where to locate them should be driven by actual medical demand, accessibility and the need to close regional healthcare gaps, not by the interests of individual universities or localities.

The group also urged the government to finalize enrollment quotas and establishment procedures for the national medical school without delay, and to draw up concrete plans covering the hospital's scale and functions, its construction timeline and its financing.

Concluding the statement, the officials said they "respect the autonomous consultations between Sunchon National University and Mokpo National University and whatever outcome they reach," and pledged to "pool every resource available so that Sunchon National University can establish a medical school and teaching hospital, become the anchor university of the integrated special city's eastern region, and serve as the backbone of critical emergency care."

The transition committee of incoming special city mayor Min Hyeong-bae had earlier proposed a compromise: a 500-bed teaching hospital in Suncheon, with the university's main campus and medical school in Mokpo, and a promise to build an additional hospital in Mokpo at a later stage. Sunchon National University rejected the offer outright.

With merger talks between the two universities deadlocked and local politicians now openly taking sides, the contest over where to place a medical school through the consolidation of South Jeolla's national universities is hardening into a regional divide — pitting the eastern cluster of Suncheon, Yeosu, Gwangyang, Boseong, Goheung, Gurye and Gokseong against the western cluster of Mokpo, Muan, Sinan, Yeongam, Haenam, Jindo, Wando and Gangjin.

The practical difficulty is stark: Mokpo and Suncheon are more than 100 kilometers apart in a straight line, making it hard to serve both regions with a single hospital. Calls for splitting the facilities between the two cities have been raised repeatedly.

After a week of deadlocked talks, the two universities agreed to Sunchon National University's request for fresh negotiations and are set to resume talks Monday afternoon.


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