From Seoul to Lima: Korean Doctors in Peru

The Republic of Korea has unique Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officers with its own EIS program in Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). Some of the medical school graduate men are recruited for their mandatory military service as EIS officers on a voluntary basis. They serve two or three years in epidemiological investigation and return to their own specialties [1]. Last year one interesting young doctor joined KCDC and worked with EIS officers and he told us that he had worked in Peru as an International Cooperation Doctor (ICD) for his mandatory military service. We have never heard of that, and asked him the history of ICDs and found that it is worthwhile to have an article to get the whole picture of the program when we got the information the ICD policy was about to be abolished in 2016. The Republic of Korea dispatches Korean nationals to partner developing countries as an ODA project through the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) which is founded as a government agency [2]. In the health sector, KOICA dispatches several health professionals such as international cooperation doctors (ICDs), nurses, physical therapists, radiologic technologists, nutritionists, medical laboratory technologists, occupational therapists, and dental hygienists. KOICA began to dispatch volunteers to Peru in 1996. The first volunteers consisted of four professionals, including one ICD. KOICA overseas office in Peru was founded in 2000, and a memorandum of understanding about volunteers dispatched between Peruvian and Korean governments was signed on December 5, 2003 [3]. The author has made a meticulous investigation on ICD program in his paper. A total of 216 ICDs were