Korean Hospital Demands American Parents Make $21,000 Payment to Get Back Son’s Body
|Here is a very odd story of a son’s body being used as a bargaining chip for payment by a Seoul hospital:
An Alabama couple was locked in a web of bureaucracy as they fought for a week to retrieve their son’s body after he died Jan. 2 in a South Korean hospital, leaving a $24,000 bill for his care.
Gregory Allen, a 31-year-old civilian employee at the Child Development Center on the Army’s Yongsan Garrison, died during open-heart surgery after he arrived on Dec. 30 at Soon Chun Hyang University hospital in Seoul in a disoriented state.
Allen’s parents flew to Seoul as soon as they heard Gregory had fallen ill and found him on Jan. 1 the intensive care unit. The official cause of death was pulmonary embolism, his parents said.
“We were shocked,” said his father, Leroy Allen Jr., a retired soldier from Madison, Ala., who had served in South Korea.
He and his wife, Margie, had little time to grieve. They said hospital officials handed them the bill and demanded payment before Gregory’s body would be released.
They gave the hospital $3,000 but didn’t have the rest. Gregory Allen’s insurance policy covered 80% of the cost, but it took time to process the claim.
“This was like 3 o’clock in the morning and they’re asking me for $21,000,” Gregory’s father told Stars and Stripes in an interview Tuesday. “Now they’re charging 90,000 won (about $80) every day that he’s sitting in that freezer in that hospital until that $21,000 is paid off.”
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
Sooncheonhyang is a piece of crap hospital anyway. Not the first time that a foreigner has died after being admitted to there.
The first thing that I would do upon getting custody of the body would be to have an autopsy done to check the official cause of death. As @J6Junkie said, Sooncheonhyang Hospital is a piece of crap hospital.
It is good to see that this has been sorted out. Of course the hospital claims they were not holding body until they got payment: 🙄
https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/alabama-couple-is-taking-their-son-home-nearly-two-weeks-after-he-died-in-south-korea-1.614731
So terribly sad for any parents to bury their children.
shaving a recruit’s head is a human rights abuse but this is fine. Strange place this is….
The “Yongsan Leftovers” page on Facebook is chock full of compliments about how genuinely good this guy was with the children at the daycare center he worked on post.
Ref Korean hospitals, Song Do Colorectal Hospital in Seoul was the best place in the world to get hemorrhoids removed (3 big painful ones). From start to finish, the whole experience was a beacon of customer service and attention to detail. Beats any American hospital experience hands down.
“3 big painful ones” — We need a TMI emoji — 😮
It hurts reading about some types of surgery… and sometimes too much info is too much info ..
JoeC, maybe we could just use ➡ ➡ ➡
TMI?
I have pictures (upon request).
Not suitable for work, public, … or home for that matter.
Mcgeehee,
Please understand that we believe you and respect you as a trusted and highly-valued member of the community; but…
I mean, no one wants to see the photos of the surgery I had on my face and jaw, where they cut me, how they reconstructed me, where they placed the drains, and so on. And although we’re talking about opposite ends of the GI tract, neither set of photos belong on GI’s blog. 😀
In fact, I’ve provided too much info. Sorry… 😯 😯 😯 😯 😯
Just when it seems within my grasp, it seems as if there is some sort of conspiracy to deny me the pictorial information I need to construct my very own ROK Drop Human Centipede.
Well, CH, if you’re buying the buffet I guess I can offer an appetizer and suggest that not all feeding tubes run through the nose are comfortable…