Friday, April 01, 2022

Samseong Hospital means DEATH

There are always protest signs outside of Samseong Hospital. Here are the ones I saw today:

all the signs together (complete with creepy, weepy, loudspeaker music)

purple sign on the left (red background, white text): "People-killing Samseong Hospital"
purple background, small font: "Because (you) killed my wife"
purple background, large font: "Kill me, too!"

yellow sign, top line: "Do surgery and kill people, right up to changing medical records"
bottom row, red font: "Murderers, evil hospital"

Big font: "Evil Samseong Hospital kills people and only takes (their) money"

top row: "People-killing, evil Samseong Hospital"
bottom row, red font: "Save my wife!" (or maybe "Bring back my wife!"(?) if the hospital killed her)

The protests in front of the hospital entrance are neverending. There are a lot of people angry at Samseong Hospital. I remember when this hospital made the news as, ironically, COVID central early in the pandemic (or was it for some other disease like SARS or MERS?). In part, that's to be expected: a house of the sick is going to be rife with disease, and it's almost a running joke that hospital staff anywhere can test positive for everything (but they're usually immune to whatever they're carrying).

Even with Samseong's fairly decent organization, given the number of patients they handle, I'm still not really sold on Korean-style health care, which has a very assembly-line aspect to it (something I talk about in my book when discussing the effects of the multiple-choice mentality on a culture). That said, I'm getting used to how things are run at Samseong Hospital. Maybe I'm becoming hypnotized as I slowly become absorbed into the system.



2 comments:

John Mac said...

It seems inevitable that sick people are going to die in hospitals. Did something specific and blameworthy happen at Samseong to trigger the protest?

The public hospital in Olongapo (James Gordon) is known in the expat community as the place where people go to die. From the stories I've heard, it is scary bad (you have to have someone go out and purchase any drugs your treatment may require for example). Here's hoping I never wind up there (I won't unless I'm unconscious in an ambulance).

Kevin Kim said...

I think several groups of people have various beefs with Samseong Hospital, and they may be coordinating their efforts. I've seen a truck, sometimes, with horrifying pictures of a botched surgery displayed on its side: another family member who ended up dead, apparently at the hands of Samseong. I don't know anything more than that.