He Chooses a Lab over a Doctor’s Office

˝I get worried sometimes when I see doctors of his age pass by driving a nice car, but I believe that my husband will make it in the end.˝

When 35-year-old medical school graduate Kim Hyun-soo said back in 1998 that he would like to study bioengineering at Pohang Institute of Technology, Min Soon-sun, his one-year-younger wife, got pretty upset.

Apart from the worry about making a living, she just knew, given his character, he would be completely preoccupied with the study once he started. She was right. After he enrolled the graduate course in September last year, he often times spent all night at a laboratory doing experiments.

Kim ranked 13th of some 140 students when he graduated the medical school. Of the 140 graduates, only 2 including Kim chose to study science, and the rest started to build carrier in plastic surgery, obstetrics and gynecology and otorhinolaryngology.

A talented medical student as he was, he decided to take on a challenge instead of becoming a doctor, one of the most respected professions.

˝Spending a year at the lab doing experiments, now I feel that I become more and more mature. In medical school, you do not have time to conduct experiments, but here it’s different. You compete with the rest of the world. I can feel to the bone the importance of basic science. In fact, we have global competitiveness in the cell signal transfer area. The atmosphere is all tensed here because some of us can just achieve a breakthrough at any time.˝

Kim is living in a 15-pyong apartment the school arranged for him. His wife and an 18-months-old daughter are living apart in Seoul. He gets paid about 550,000 won every month. It is not from school. They share subsidies allocated to the lab. Kim said that he felt sorry for the poor conditions instead of feeling envious when his friends told him they earn 100 million won a year.

Kim is currently studying how a myriad of substances comprising a human cell send and receive bio signals.

˝It’s a big loss on the national level that even medical students interested in basic science choose to become practitioners just because of money,˝ Kim pointed out. ˝We will be able to win the Nobel Prize one day by encouraging 10% of medical students to study basic science.˝

boriam@donga.com