He left for Mongolia as soon as he qualified as a specialist…a ‘field doctor’ who spent 20 years in remote regions
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Gangnam St. Peter's Hospital 26-06-05 00:00Main content
He left for Mongolia as soon as he qualified as a specialist…a ‘field doctor’ who spent 20 years in remote regions
Reporter Shim, Hee Jin
Posted: 2026.06.05 07:22
Interview with Park Kwan-tae, Director of St. Peter's Hospital
Personally brought laparoscopic equipment to Mongolia
Operated on 8 cases a day until his hand developed tendinitis
Kept operating even in a full cast
For a critically ill Ethiopian woman,
that country's first vena cava stent procedure
Saved an expectant mother in the Haiti earthquake too
Dreams of launching a 'flying operating room'
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae.
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae.
A face swollen as if about to burst, eyes all but bulging out, ragged breathing that barely continued.... The condition of the woman in her 30s I encountered in Ethiopia over the recent Lunar New Year holiday was dire. Unable to afford anything better, she had kept in place for more than six months a cheap catheter (a plastic tube inserted into a vein for blood dialysis) meant to be used for two weeks, and her vena cava had become completely blocked.
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae, Director of the Hepatobiliary-Pancreatic & Vascular Center at St. Peter's Hospital, inserted a stent (a metal mesh) he had brought with him from Korea into the patient's blood vessel. It was the first vena cava stent procedure in Ethiopia's history. “When you do medical volunteer work, there are moments when you think, ‘if it weren’t for me, this person would die today,’” Dr. Park said. “The swell of feeling that comes when you save a life hanging in the balance is exactly what sustains a life in medicine.”
Director Park is a leading authority in organ transplantation and vascular surgery in Korea. After graduating from Korea University College of Medicine, he served as a clinical assistant professor at Asan Medical Center and as deputy director of the Organ Transplantation Center at Korea University Anam Hospital, building advanced surgical skills and clinical expertise. His colleagues call him a ‘field doctor’ — a mark of respect for a man who turned down the comfortable path of a university hospital professorship and spent more than 20 years working in the most poorly resourced medical settings.
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He first headed for a remote region in 2001, right after completing his residency. During medical school he and his closest friend, the late Shim Jae-hak, had agreed, ‘When we become specialists, let's go to Mongolia to volunteer together.’ But Shim died of cancer in his third year of residency. Carrying his friend's dying wish — ‘Do my share too’ — Director Park boarded a plane for Mongolia as soon as he qualified as a specialist.
He took up the post of chief of surgery at Yonsei Friendship Hospital in Mongolia, but conditions were poor. Director Park said, “It was a small hospital without even an operating room, yet more than 100 patients waited for care every day. Most of them had simply been left untreated.”
Caption Enlarge photo
At that time, open surgery was the only form of surgical care available in Mongolia. Director Park personally brought in laparoscopic equipment and laid the foundations of a surgical system there. In four years he performed more than 5,000 cholecystectomies alone. Holding the scalpel for an average of eight cases a day left him with tendinitis in his hand, but he kept operating in a full cast with only his fingertips exposed.
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His record in the field shone even brighter at disaster sites. Having joined a multinational medical team during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, he encountered a mother in labor in a critical condition. He was a veteran who had saved countless patients, but he had no experience of childbirth, so he performed the first cesarean section of his life while asking his wife, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist, about the procedure over an international phone call.
He said, “My wife was up in arms, telling me not to cause trouble, but two lives hung in the balance and I could not back down, so I opened the abdomen while picturing the procedure in my head,” adding, “A German doctor handled the anesthesia and an American doctor assisted — the baby came out healthy because the medical team pulled together.” He went on to recall, “I have performed countless operations, but it was a precious experience in which I truly felt I had saved a ‘life’.”
A patient with a hernia whom he met in a remote Mongolian village in midwinter remains his most harrowing memory. With bowel necrosis already under way, he laid the patient on a dining table inside a ger with no lighting, gave spinal anesthesia only, and opened the abdomen. He poured warm water over the blackened bowel and just managed to bring the color back, but carrying out a bowel resection in an environment with a high risk of infection was like handling a time bomb. In the end he pushed the bowel back into the abdomen, closed the wound, and decided to transfer the patient to a larger hospital. If the bowel became necrotic once more, the patient's life could not be guaranteed.
Driven by the single thought that he had to save his patient, Director Park drove out across the vast, frozen expanse of Lake Khuvsgul. He said, “In fear that the ice might break at any moment, I raced a full five hours to the nearest provincial hospital,” adding, “After that desperate struggle I got the patient safely admitted, and the emotion I felt a few days later on seeing him fully recovered has stayed with me as a lifelong memory.”
In Korea, too, he is a field doctor. At St. Peter's Hospital, where he now works, he keeps to a six-day week and stands at the operating table day and night, weekends included. Recently he cancelled a Saturday conference engagement and rushed to the hospital to perform emergency surgery on a patient with a ruptured rectum, and he also caught the warning signs in a patient who had come in for a routine consultation, detecting pancreatic cancer early and completing the operation successfully.
He has saved countless lives over his career, yet has never once taken a vacation for himself. This coming July, too, he will unfailingly set off on a medical volunteer trip to Africa. The dream of a man who has run without rest is a ‘flying operating room’ that can reach deep into remote inland areas. Director Park said, “Hospital ships have the limitation that they have to dock on the coast, don’t they?” and added, “My goal is to fly directly to places that medical infrastructure does not reach at all.” He went on with a smile, “I want to put a flying operating room in the air and pour my last passion into the most marginalized people in the world,” adding, “I imagine that will be sometime in my early to mid-60s, while my strength still allows it.”
Reporter Shim, Hee Jin
Posted: 2026.06.05 07:22
Interview with Park Kwan-tae, Director of St. Peter's Hospital
Personally brought laparoscopic equipment to Mongolia
Operated on 8 cases a day until his hand developed tendinitis
Kept operating even in a full cast
For a critically ill Ethiopian woman,
that country's first vena cava stent procedure
Saved an expectant mother in the Haiti earthquake too
Dreams of launching a 'flying operating room'
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae.
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae.
A face swollen as if about to burst, eyes all but bulging out, ragged breathing that barely continued.... The condition of the woman in her 30s I encountered in Ethiopia over the recent Lunar New Year holiday was dire. Unable to afford anything better, she had kept in place for more than six months a cheap catheter (a plastic tube inserted into a vein for blood dialysis) meant to be used for two weeks, and her vena cava had become completely blocked.
Dr. Park, Kwan Tae, Director of the Hepatobiliary-Pancreatic & Vascular Center at St. Peter's Hospital, inserted a stent (a metal mesh) he had brought with him from Korea into the patient's blood vessel. It was the first vena cava stent procedure in Ethiopia's history. “When you do medical volunteer work, there are moments when you think, ‘if it weren’t for me, this person would die today,’” Dr. Park said. “The swell of feeling that comes when you save a life hanging in the balance is exactly what sustains a life in medicine.”
Director Park is a leading authority in organ transplantation and vascular surgery in Korea. After graduating from Korea University College of Medicine, he served as a clinical assistant professor at Asan Medical Center and as deputy director of the Organ Transplantation Center at Korea University Anam Hospital, building advanced surgical skills and clinical expertise. His colleagues call him a ‘field doctor’ — a mark of respect for a man who turned down the comfortable path of a university hospital professorship and spent more than 20 years working in the most poorly resourced medical settings.
Advertisement
He first headed for a remote region in 2001, right after completing his residency. During medical school he and his closest friend, the late Shim Jae-hak, had agreed, ‘When we become specialists, let's go to Mongolia to volunteer together.’ But Shim died of cancer in his third year of residency. Carrying his friend's dying wish — ‘Do my share too’ — Director Park boarded a plane for Mongolia as soon as he qualified as a specialist.
He took up the post of chief of surgery at Yonsei Friendship Hospital in Mongolia, but conditions were poor. Director Park said, “It was a small hospital without even an operating room, yet more than 100 patients waited for care every day. Most of them had simply been left untreated.”
Caption Enlarge photo
At that time, open surgery was the only form of surgical care available in Mongolia. Director Park personally brought in laparoscopic equipment and laid the foundations of a surgical system there. In four years he performed more than 5,000 cholecystectomies alone. Holding the scalpel for an average of eight cases a day left him with tendinitis in his hand, but he kept operating in a full cast with only his fingertips exposed.
Advertisement
His record in the field shone even brighter at disaster sites. Having joined a multinational medical team during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, he encountered a mother in labor in a critical condition. He was a veteran who had saved countless patients, but he had no experience of childbirth, so he performed the first cesarean section of his life while asking his wife, an obstetrics and gynecology specialist, about the procedure over an international phone call.
He said, “My wife was up in arms, telling me not to cause trouble, but two lives hung in the balance and I could not back down, so I opened the abdomen while picturing the procedure in my head,” adding, “A German doctor handled the anesthesia and an American doctor assisted — the baby came out healthy because the medical team pulled together.” He went on to recall, “I have performed countless operations, but it was a precious experience in which I truly felt I had saved a ‘life’.”
A patient with a hernia whom he met in a remote Mongolian village in midwinter remains his most harrowing memory. With bowel necrosis already under way, he laid the patient on a dining table inside a ger with no lighting, gave spinal anesthesia only, and opened the abdomen. He poured warm water over the blackened bowel and just managed to bring the color back, but carrying out a bowel resection in an environment with a high risk of infection was like handling a time bomb. In the end he pushed the bowel back into the abdomen, closed the wound, and decided to transfer the patient to a larger hospital. If the bowel became necrotic once more, the patient's life could not be guaranteed.
Driven by the single thought that he had to save his patient, Director Park drove out across the vast, frozen expanse of Lake Khuvsgul. He said, “In fear that the ice might break at any moment, I raced a full five hours to the nearest provincial hospital,” adding, “After that desperate struggle I got the patient safely admitted, and the emotion I felt a few days later on seeing him fully recovered has stayed with me as a lifelong memory.”
In Korea, too, he is a field doctor. At St. Peter's Hospital, where he now works, he keeps to a six-day week and stands at the operating table day and night, weekends included. Recently he cancelled a Saturday conference engagement and rushed to the hospital to perform emergency surgery on a patient with a ruptured rectum, and he also caught the warning signs in a patient who had come in for a routine consultation, detecting pancreatic cancer early and completing the operation successfully.
He has saved countless lives over his career, yet has never once taken a vacation for himself. This coming July, too, he will unfailingly set off on a medical volunteer trip to Africa. The dream of a man who has run without rest is a ‘flying operating room’ that can reach deep into remote inland areas. Director Park said, “Hospital ships have the limitation that they have to dock on the coast, don’t they?” and added, “My goal is to fly directly to places that medical infrastructure does not reach at all.” He went on with a smile, “I want to put a flying operating room in the air and pour my last passion into the most marginalized people in the world,” adding, “I imagine that will be sometime in my early to mid-60s, while my strength still allows it.”