Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders), a non-governmental organization that provides medical aid to the underprivileged, opened a Seoul office Wednesday.

“The opening of the Seoul office will reinforce the independence and enhance the capacity of our organization. We will be able to use the resources for the most vulnerable people,” said Emmanuel Goue, the head of the office at the press conference in downtown Seoul on Wednesday. 

The Korean office is the latest addition to the international group with a history of more than four decades working in 27 countries with a staff of 30,000.

Established through a collaboration of journalists and doctors, the group dispatches its members to more than 60 poverty-stricken states such as Guatemala and Ethiopia and war-ravaged countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia and South Sudan.

The group was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

“We dispatch emergency teams to problematic areas within 48 hours from the report. We go with large-scale emergencies to places where medical needs have become more of a routine,” Goue said.

MSF is already well-known in Korea.

The group won the Seoul Peace Prize in 1996. From 2002-2006 it operated psychological treatment programs for North Korean defectors. Also, its delegations recently visited North Korea to study the feasibility and necessity of a special medical program there.

MSF has signed a special pact with the Ministry of Health and Welfare, becoming the first of many international NGOs in Korea to exchange information as well as financial and human resources with hospitals and medical schools in the country.

Goue said the organization hopes that Korean society will provide sufficient financial support and human resources to their charitable activities. The country is important in strategic terms, he added.

“We have four Korean members running the field, and several other member staff already have finished their missions here. But it is not enough. We need more medical workers such as doctors, nurses and midwives. We need more paramedical members such as pharmacists and technicians. We need more administrators and logisticians,” he said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)