South Korea expands telemedicine to underserved areas as public health doctors decline
South Korea’s government says the number of public health doctors, or gongboeui, is dropping rapidly due to a broad policy clash that has disrupted training for resident doctors and medical students. In response, the Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to prioritize gongboeui deployment in medically underserved areas and expand mobile and telemedicine services to prevent gaps in essential care.
Public health doctors have long served in rural health centers where private clinics are scarce and physician recruitment is difficult. Their numbers have fallen as the service term for gongboeui (36 months) lags behind that of active-duty soldiers (18 months), and as more women enter medical schools. The combination has reduced the overall pool of gongboeui.
The ministry notes that ongoing disagreements over medical policy during 2024–2025 worsened training gaps, with military leaves among medical students and stalled resident programs. This year’s intake of transfer students was only 98, far short of the 450 gongboeui who complete their service, a ratio of about 22%.
Overall gongboeui staffing has slumped from 945 in 2025 to 593 this year, a decline of about 37%. The Health Ministry now expects continued difficulty in maintaining regional medical autonomy through 2031 and is pursuing a multi-pronged set of measures with local governments.
A key focus is medically vulnerable areas. These are regions with no clinics or pharmacies at or above the level of a health center, and where the distance to the nearest neighboring facility is at least 4 kilometers. Nationwide there are 547 such areas, of which 532 are served by health centers. Among these, 139 are remote locations lacking private medical institutions, while 393 have health centers but no guaranteed doctor presence. The plan includes deploying gongboeui to the 139 remote spots and reorganizing functions at the 393 centers based on local conditions, including population and the presence of dental or traditional medicine services.
In places where doctors are not available, the ministry will station nurses who can perform certain clinical tasks and vaccination work (151 such positions), and it will convert 42 health centers into regular health clinics to provide continuous care. About 200 health centers will continue to receive periodic gongboeui rounds from nearby facilities.
Beyond in-person care, the government intends to boost non-face-to-face medical services and remote consultations. Telemedicine will be expanded with participation from private clinics and regional medical centers, and a policy framework will be built to widen remote collaboration. The ministry says that AI-enabled clinical support and remote consultation systems could improve accuracy and efficiency once those tools are developed.
Workforce strategies include expanding long-term physician service in rural areas through a pilot “contract-type regional essential physician” program that will include regional medical centers, and continuing the recruitment of senior doctors aged 60 and over. The plan also calls for stronger routine and dispatched medical visits by 55 regional medical institutions.
The government is also pursuing policy changes to shorten military service for medical personnel to encourage greater public-service deployment. Health Minister Jeong Eui-kyung said the aim is to ensure that residents in vulnerable areas can access care wherever they live and to build a sustainable regional health system.
Why this matters for the United States: Korea’s approach highlights how a high-income country is addressing rural health care through a mix of targeted staffing, telemedicine, and technology-enabled remote care. The emphasis on AI-supported decision tools, large-scale telehealth, and cross-institutional collaboration could inform U.S. efforts to expand care in sparsely populated regions, improve crisis responsiveness, and diversify the health workforce. For U.S. policymakers and markets, the development of standardized remote-care protocols and regional health networks may influence healthcare technology adoption, supply chain planning for medical devices and software, and potential international partnerships in health IT and public health staffing.