Modernization of public district general hospitals

After the destruction of many public hospitals, such as Municipal and Provincial Hospitals during the Korean War, the Korean government worked hard to rebuild them; as a result, Municipal and Provincial Hospitals numbered 43 (4,830 sickbeds) by 1979. Note, however, that the hospitals that had played a significant role in the national health system saw their roles shrink, compared to the rapidly growing private hospitals beginning in the 1970s; they played a mere supporting role to private hospitals, and came to be regarded as low-quality hospitals for the low-income brackets. To make matters worse, operational efficiency in the hospitals were fairly low, since the features of the hospitals were not considered important. This prompted the Korean government to go through two rounds of policy promotion to nurture them into public district general hospitals. The first policy promotion was the public health system improvement program, which embraced Municipal and Provincial Hospitals for about eight years, beginning in 1981;(The rest omitted)