Jo Dong-chan believes in following his passion. Jo acts as the go-to reporter in South Korea’s health and medical community. He served as a neurosurgeon during the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and broke the news on cases that hit the nation, such as the mystery lung-related disease. His on-the-spot reporting and medical expertise have had his colleagues compare him to Sanjay Gupta, the multiple Emmy Award-winning chief medical correspondent at CNN. Jo speaks at international conferences and meets with politicians, medical specialists and big-name institution leaders in South Korea.

As a medical correspondent for SBS, one of the nation’s three major terrestrial broadcasting networks, Jo believes in his life motto: “You need to have a sense of purpose. You need to enjoy what you do.”

From Treating Patients to Reporting News

As a doctor-turned-journalist, one of most common questions people have for Jo is “Why journalism?” In South Korea, becoming a doctor is no easy task - it requires passing rigorous examinations for getting into medical college, six years of hard study, one year as an intern and four years as a resident. Most medical college graduates become practicing M.D.’s because of tradition, dedication, familial or societal pressures, prestige, and wealth.

Jo diverged from the path followed by most.

“To be honest, I did not pursue journalism out of a sense of social responsibility, or for the greater good,” he said in a recent interview with the Korea Biomedical Review(KBR). “I did it because I wanted to have fun.”

Born in 1974, Jo entered Hanyang University Medical School in 1994, serving as the class representative in his third year of medical college. He graduated in 2000 with notable grades, completed his internship in 2001, and finished his neurosurgery residency in 2005.

In the same year, he was conscripted as an army surgeon and served as a medical company commander in the 27th division, nicknamed “Igija” (Let’s Win) unit in Hwacheon, Gangwon Province, notorious for one of the most grueling training in the Army. In his second year, he worked as the section head neurosurgeon at the Armed Forces Seoul Hospital in Seoul.

It was around this time when he had worked as a doctor for eight years, that he watched television and stumbled upon a medical correspondent on the news. It sparked his interest immediately. On Aug. 2008, he applied for the SBS’ medical journalist position, and got the job, starting his career as a reporter.

As a budding journalist, it is hard to do the job well. “I thought I was a pretty smart person,” he said. “But becoming an expert medical correspondent was harder than I expected it would be.” Journalists live a “life of a fly,” always searching for good material and writing on impending deadlines, while simultaneously looking for the next hot topic, he added.

Despite fast-approaching deadlines and limited resources, Jo has continued work as a journalist over the past 10 years.

“As a journalist, I have gained a much more comprehensive view of the medical field and medical treatment. I learned about the health care system, the quality of treatment, and people who didn’t even go to hospitals,” he said. “I could walk into another doctor’s office and see what was wrong. I began to have a bird’s-eye view of the situation.”

When public disputes in the medical field, such as the one over the cause of death of the farm activist Baek Nam-ki determined by a Seoul National University surgeon, he was the first to report it.

“If I were a doctor, I wouldn’t be able to criticize another physician, let alone a big-name medical institution on faulty procedures,” he said. “Journalism is a field that lets me see what’s wrong, and let people know why it’s wrong.”

Even though he initially doubted the impact of his reporting, he began to receive unexpected responses from the public, and see changes occurring in the industry.

In his second year as a medical correspondent, Jo went to Haiti in 2010 to cover the earthquake in the Caribbean country. He was assigned the role of a neurosurgeon in addition to that of a journalist at Washington Hospital’s volunteer clinic. He recalls arranging surgery rooms, stitching up open wounds, and treating patients from 9 to 5 every day.

“As I was treating patients, I realized that the clinic was not just a site of medical treatment but that of on-the-spot reporting as well. I was getting firsthand accounts of these patients when I interacted with them during treatment. I learned about their injuries and their accounts,” Jo said.

As a doctor and journalist rolled into one, he was able to treat patients in urgent care and experience the conflicts that occurred between the patient and doctor, which became fodder for his writing.

“There’s a world of difference between reporting on the spot and writing articles by reading some official reports. You can’t get the truth sitting behind a desk. You have to go out and find it,” he added.

Where health care and media converge

“Korea has one of the most accessible health care systems in the world,” Jo said. Accessibility comes in the form of price and location; quality depends on a doctor’s performance, and the outcome depends on the both availability and quality. Jo said Korea delivers on all three. There is always room for improvement, but there is a reason why developed and developing countries alike benchmark Korea for its unique health care system.

Likewise, Korean media also covers a vast number of topics from which foreign media could also benefit. Jo recalled reporting on the backdoor systems employed by IMS Health, a U.S. company that provides information, technology, and service solutions for the healthcare industry. When he exposed the questionable collection, use and sale of individual patient data to global pharmaceutical companies, advertising agencies and government bodies, Jo found that he was the only journalist to do so in-depth.

Jo was then interviewed by Harvard University for a week, an extraordinary experience for a Korean reporter.

“I got a call from Harvard University, asking for the reporter who covered IMS Health. They told me that my article, in Korean, was the only source that exposed IMS Health’s operations in-depth, and wanted to interview me.”

Researchers at Harvard University followed Jo for a week, interviewing the people that he talked, and gaining information through him to publish in their research paper.

In this way, Jo sees great potential in Korean health care and Korean media, saying that foreigners could benefit greatly by gaining access to information and services provided in the Korean language.

Asked about the impact Korea Biomedical Review could have on the international stage, Jo was confident, saying, “There is a language barrier when it comes to information. We need to overcome it by opening the Korean media and Korean health care to the world, which KBR seems to be doing.”

Jo’s efforts to excel in a different field have opened his eyes to a wider and more exciting world. “Doctors are needed in every area of technology to the government to media,” he said. “There are so many things that doctors can, and should, do.”