The Medical Tourism Support Center opens at the first terminal of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, in 2018. Photo by Yonhap/EPA
SEOUL, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- At the newspaper where I spent my career, every employee was sent for a yearly health checkup -- a staff benefit, nothing more.
One year a colleague came back from his exam in a foul mood. Told to return for a second look, he was sure the hospital was after his money. He was, he insisted, perfectly well.
He had the re-examination, anyway. Then surgery. The screening had caught a disease he never suspected but early enough to treat. He went on to head two broadcasters, a towering figure in Korean journalism.
I thought of him this summer, reading how foreign visitors now have the same experience. In July, within weeks of one another, British media outlets -- the Guardian and the BBC among them - covered the Korean health checkup phenomenon with something close to wonder.
