The news of that day has passed, but its meaning remains with us today. "That Day, Today" reads the present through records of the past. — Editor's note
Oct. 26, 2016. Kwon Dae-hee, a 25-year-old university student who collapsed from massive bleeding during facial contouring surgery at a plastic surgery clinic, died after 49 days in intensive care.
His mother fought for seven years afterward, and that fight led to a law mandating closed-circuit television cameras in operating rooms, known as the "Kwon Dae-hee Law." Why did an ordinary college student lose his life on an operating table?
Kwon suffered massive bleeding on Sept. 8, 2016, while undergoing jaw reduction and chin reduction procedures at a plastic surgery clinic in Seoul's Gangnam district. Blood loss reached 3,500 cubic centimeters. The clinic had set up multiple operating rooms and ran procedures in sequence, administering anesthesia and sutures one after another. The clinic director, surnamed Jang, was operating on another patient and left Kwon's bleeding control to a single nursing assistant for about 30 minutes.
Operating room CCTV footage captured the patient left unattended without a doctor present. Kwon, who had not received a transfusion, was moved to a university hospital emergency room around midnight and died 49 days later.
A 0.3% Petition That Overturned a Decision Not to Prosecute
The family filed a criminal complaint a month after the incident, but prosecutors saw it differently. In November 2019, prosecutors recognized only the charge of professional negligence resulting in death and declined to prosecute on the charge of unlicensed medical practice over the nursing assistant's solo bleeding control. The family appealed the decision but was rejected. Rather than give up, the family filed a petition asking the court to order prosecution directly.
The acceptance rate for such petitions hovers around 0.3%. In October 2020, the 31st criminal division of the Seoul High Court granted part of the petition, ordering that the clinic director, a fellow doctor and the nursing assistant also be indicted for violating the Medical Service Act through unlicensed medical practice. In a separate civil case, the court ordered the clinic to pay more than 430 million won in damages, setting its share of liability at 80%.
Kwon's mother, Lee Na-geum, reviewed medical records, expert assessments and operating room CCTV footage countless times to prove the medical staff's negligence herself. She held a one-person protest for 416 days and became head of the Medical Justice Action Alliance, a civic group that assists victims of medical accidents.
A Three-Year Sentence Upheld, and the Fight That Remains in the 'Kwon Dae-hee Law'
The trial court sentenced the clinic director to three years in prison and a fine of 5 million won, and ordered him detained in the courtroom. The appeals court also convicted him of falsifying anesthesia records — a charge the trial court had dismissed — and raised the fine to 10 million won. The appellate bench pointed out that the clinic was structured in a way that made it impossible for medical staff to focus on a single patient. As a result, it said, they failed to monitor the excessive bleeding closely and missed opportunities to take steps such as further surgery or transfer to another hospital. The court also found that the nursing assistant applying compression to control bleeding alone, without a doctor's guidance or supervision, amounted to unlicensed medical practice.
On Jan. 12, 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's sentence of three years in prison and a 10 million won fine for the clinic director. The fellow doctor received a suspended prison term, and the nursing assistant a suspended imposition of a 3 million won fine. After the ruling, Lee said an ordinary mother had become a "street fighter" over seven years of litigation following her child's death, and appealed for an end to "ghost surgery" and "factory surgery" so that no second Kwon Dae-hee would emerge.
The "Kwon Dae-hee Law," which made CCTV cameras in operating rooms mandatory in the wake of Kwon's death, took effect in September 2023. On the 10th anniversary of the case this year, a young man's death that began with being left unattended in an operating room has left behind a legal safeguard for patients.
