Major associations of doctors were slapped with hefty fine for attempting to obstruct the business of Korean medicine doctors by pressuring companies not to sell them medical equipment, the Fair Trade Commission said Sunday.

The Korean Medical Association, the National Union of Korean Medical Doctors and Korea Medical Clinic Association were given penalties totaling 1.14 billion won for forcing medical equipment and diagnostic companies from doing business with the Korean traditional medicine practitioners.

According to FTC, the KMA was revealed to have pressured GE Healthcare against selling its ultrasound machines to Korean medicine doctors, threatening to boycott the company’s products otherwise from January 2009 to May 2012.

The company was eventually forced to halt all business with Korean medicine doctors, and bear the cost of having broken contracts for a total of nine machines that it had promised to deliver, the agency said.

The pressure from the doctors’ groups also reportedly hit Samsung Medison. The company’s business transaction with the traditional medicine doctors had dropped to nil since 2009, the FTC said.

Other influence-peddling included forcing large-scale diagnostic institutes from providing blood sample tests for Korean medicine clinics since 2011.

Medical fields have witnessed fierce competition and confrontation between doctors practicing scientific medicine and traditional Korean medicine, with the former protesting the latter’s use of modern technologies.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare currently says that Korean medicine practitioners’ use of ultrasound diagnostic tools is legal and that they can seek blood tests and samples in their diagnosis.

The FTC imposed a 1 billion won penalty for the KMA, 120 million won for KMCA and 17 million won for the union.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)