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

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