A patient’s murder of a psychiatrist at a mental hospital in Busan has shocked the entire medical community.

The incident was similar to the one 20 months ago when a patient stabbed a psychiatrist, Professor Lim Se-won, to death at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital in Seoul.

The Korean Medical Association, a group of 130,000 doctors, released a statement on Wednesday.

“We express our deepest condolences to our member who passed away in a sudden incident,” the KMA said. “We are in unspeakable shock and sadness because the horrible disaster occurred even before we could recover from the nightmare of Professor Lim Se-won’s death.”

The KMA urged the government to conduct a thorough investigation into the latest case and hold those accountable with stern punishment. Also, the government should draw up measures to prevent violence against psychiatrists during a medical consultation, the association said.

The doctors’ group has repeatedly proposed measures to root out attacks on medical professionals. Still, the latest incident showed that their safety was in danger defenselessly, it said.

Rather than pushing for “four evils” of the government’s healthcare policy, such as increasing doctors, the government should first work hard to keep doctors safe, the KMA said.

After the psychiatrist Lim’s death at the end of 2018, similar cases of doctors getting attacked by patients have kept occurring.

In October, an orthopedic surgeon at the Eulji General Hospital was injured by a patient’s wielding of a weapon. In July last year, a psychiatrist was assaulted by a mentally ill patient whom the doctor treated three months earlier.

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