Professor Park Jung-yul, a neurosurgeon at Korea University Anam Hospital, has been elected chair of the World Medical Association (WMA). Park, vice president of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), is the first Korean to chair the global doctors’ group.

Park, also chair of WMA’s finance and planning committee, was elected unopposed at the WMA’s Council meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, the association said on Thursday.

Park is the second Asian to chair WMA after Dr. S. Mishima of Japan was elected in 1987.

The late Moon Tae-joon, former minister of health and welfare, was elected president of WMA in 1985 and vice chair in 1995.

Dr. Tohru Kakuta of Japan was reelected as vice chair of the council, and Mr. Rudolf Henke of Germany, a director of the German Medical Association, was elected treasurer at the council meeting.

"Physicians around the world were only just emerging from the long tunnel of the pandemic and were now facing many other global and local challenges,” Professor Park said upon his election. “They would only succeed by working together, and I believe the WMA, more than ever, had a crucial role to play by representing almost 15 million physicians worldwide.”

WMA has 115 national doctors’ groups, including the KMA, and 9 million doctors as its members. KMA joined WMA in 1949 and served as its regional executive country representing the Pacific area from 2021 to 2022. KMA recommended Professor Park as the regional director working at the WMA Secretariat. Park was serving as a director dispatched to WMA at the time.