Former Kim Sun-min, ex-HIRA President, Starts Anew as Occupational and Environmental Medicine Specialist

Working at Taebaek Hospital under the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service

On the 18th, Kim Seon-min, the former president of the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA), who retired about a month before the end of his term last March, became a specialist in occupational and environmental medicine at Taebaek Hospital, affiliated with the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service.

Taebaek Hospital is renowned as the first public medical institution specializing in industrial accidents in Korea.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Former President Kim initially aspired to specialize in occupational and environmental medicine (then industrial medicine) and became a specialist in industrial medicine after training in preventive medicine and family medicine.

He explained that since he mainly worked in the field of medical policy after learning about industrial health policy and receiving training in medical management, he felt some regret, which led to his new start as a specialist.

Meanwhile, former President Kim served as a professor at Hallym University College of Medicine and a senior researcher at the Korea Health Industry Development Institute since 1998. He later worked as the human rights research officer at the National Human Rights Commission, a senior technical officer at the World Health Organization (WHO), and from 2019 for three years, he served as the chair of the OECD Working Group on Quality and Outcomes in Health Care.