Huh Kap-bum

Professor Emeritus in Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine

Huh Kap-bum, a personal physician of former President Kim Dae-jung during his government (1998-2003), led a special committee to introduce the U.S.-style medical school system here to foster more physician-scientists. He is one of the most noted diabetes experts in Korea.

Korea has many world-class surgeons but few world-class medical researchers, which bodes ill for the country that considers its medical industry as a future growth engine, one scholar said. Even more worrying, Korea’s medical education system is failing behind the times. According to Huh Kap-bum, 78, a former dean of Yonsei University College of Medicine, the system is regressing. “At a time when Korea badly needs more research experts in medical fields, its education system is now falling back into the outdated model, which is largely designed to train students as surgeons,” he said in an interview. “The country needs more physician-scientists. Otherwise, the future for its medical industry is bleak.” By 2021, the U.S.-style medical school system, which requires an undergraduate degree and an additional four years in medical school, will be abolished in Korea. This change means that students will have to get a high score on the state-administered annual college entrance exam and, upon graduation, take an integrated six-year program to get a medical license. Currently, students can choose either pathway to become a doctor. The government adopted the U.S.-style medical education system in 2005 to foster more physician-scientists, which refer to doctors who invest most of their time and effort in scientific research rather than directly treating patients. “The decision is wrong and can seriously damage the nation’s growth potential,” Huh said. “Physician-scientists contribute enormously to the advancement of medicine by providing new treatment methods and knowledge foundation. Korea needs more of them, not less.” Physician-scientists may, for example, focus on developing entirely new approaches to kill bacteria or to cure terminal illnesses such as cancer, while clinicians apply what has been discovered and developed to their patients.

Armed with the wealth of information from up-to-date medical research, physician-scientists are tasked to bridge the knowledge gap between basic scientists and clinicians. “With research getting more complex and technologies advancing faster than ever, we need them more than ever,” Huh said. Huh, who was President Kim Dae-jung’s personal physician during his administration (1998-2003), led a special committee to adopt the U.S.-style medical school system. The basic idea of such system was to give students an opportunity to explore other academic fields such as biology and chemistry during their undergraduate years before they buckle down to study medicine. However, the system eventually failed because few medical professors supported it. Many complain that aspiring physician-scientists were too slow and cautious to work with, in comparison with those who studied medicine immediately after graduating high school. “There were some adjustment issues between teachers and students,” Huh said. For example, he noted, clinicians should adhere to guidelines of practice and are taught to act fast (especially during urgent medical situations), while students with a scientific background tend to challenge existing ideas and are trained to avoid rushing to judgment. “It would be better to keep the U.S.-style education system in Korea, but, if it is too difficult to do so, the government has to find other ways to cultivate more physician-scientists.”

Needs for an M.D.-Ph.D. program

Korea simply lacks education programs for aspiring physician-scientists, according to Huh. He believes the government should adopt the M.D.-Ph.D. program, which provides students with training in both medicine and research. “The government selected 10 hospitals as research-focused centers two years ago and has financially supported them since. Yet there are few people capable of doing the job,” he said. “An M.D.-Ph.D. program will be greatly helpful in solving the problem.” In the U.S., which is the world’s best in medical research, more than 100 medical schools have M.D.-Ph.D. programs. Also, the government-backed National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides competitive schools with funding for tuition and stipend of M.D.-Ph.D. students. “There are 41 medical schools in Korea with over 3,500 students graduating every year. With such support, the government should encourage at least 5 to 10 percent of them to choose M.D.-Ph.D. programs. The education will help them grow as extremely useful resources for many areas,” Huh said. Physician-scientists work at universities, research institutions, pharmaceutical companies or medical device companies. There are around 9,000 physician-scientists in the NIH alone. “Korea also needs an organization like the NIH in order to support physician-scientists more systematically and broadly,” Huh said. Japan already adopted similar system 20 years ago in an effort to promote basic science. All of these improvements, he said, are important and necessary work for Korea, if it ever wants to win the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. “Three Japanese have so far won the prize in the field, including Satoshi Omura this year. Korea needs to look at how they did it,” he said.

Pioneer in diabetes treatment in Korea

According to Statistics Korea, more than 4 million people suffer from diabetes, the fifth leading cause of death in the country. But in the early 1970s, the disease was very rare among Koreans. “So, I was surprised when my professor Choi Heung-jae asked me to study the field at that time,” Huh, who now runs Huh Diabetes Clinic and Research Institute in Seoul, said. “Choi, who had studied in the U.S., predicted that the number of patients with diabetes would increase. “That’s how my career as a diabetes doctor began. And, it turned out, he was right.” There were no teachers in the field and no information was available in Korean. “It was lots of self-study. I had to read English textbooks over and over,” he said. To gain clinical experience, he studied at the University of Montpellier for one year in 1975 through a program sponsored by the French government. “I saw how my knowledge could be applied to treat patients there. I was very fortunate.” Diabetes, or more specifically, diabetes mellitus, refers a group of metabolic diseases in which the person has high blood glucose, either because insulin production is not enough (insulin deficiency), or because the cells do not properly respond to insulin (insulin resistance), or both. At that time, few doctors, let alone patients, were familiar with the disease. To better inform them about how to prevent and manage diabetes, Huh established treatment guidelines in 2003. His guidelines are still widely used as an educational reference. “Lifestyle greatly affects the risks of diabetes,” he said. “A healthy diet and regular exercise to keep the body slim are important to prevent and manage the disease. No secrets.”