From the 1995 Act to the third plan, and why prevention came to the centre

In Korea, the notes say, a National Health Promotion Comprehensive Plan has been drawn up at the level of the central government on the basis of the National Health Promotion Act, enacted in 1995. From 2002 the first such plan appeared in Korea for the first time; a second followed in 2005, and in 2010 the third health-promotion comprehensive plan (HP2020) was being pursued. Those years stay in 1995, 2002, 2005, and 2010 as the notes give them, and are not treated here as a later official total.

The reason such a medium- and long-term plan was established, they write, can be judged to be that deaths from chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and various cancers had become the people’s leading cause of death, so that health policy and projects centred on prevention were more urgently required. Korean society today, in their telling, has seen a rapid rise in lifestyle diseases — hypertension, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, metabolic syndrome, obesity — from factors such as a lack of exercise and nutritional imbalance, and there is a need to renew national health policy for the prevention of those diseases.

Countries around the world, they write, have for some time been attempting a turn in medical policy from therapeutic medicine toward preventive medicine, for reasons that include the excessive fiscal burden of social medical costs; in step with that, the Ministry of Health and Welfare has also been trying, by announcing and revising the National Health Promotion Comprehensive Plan, to turn a treatment-centred policy of health management back toward a centre in prevention. Diseases that arise from a lack of exercise, once they have appeared, are not easily cured, so primary prevention is valued; active intervention by the state is also requested in connection with potential disease factors that prevention can still cure. The promotion of physical activity for health, they add, has become a universal current in countries around the world, and the medical community in East and West recommends exercise as a means of health promotion, disease prevention, and rehabilitation; but in Korea, they write, there is no legal ground that would guarantee this, so many citizens do not receive the benefit of exercise, and confusion is added both for those who work in exercise prescription and for citizens who need exercise in pursuit of health promotion.

Six fields, 31 tasks, 357 indicators, and Article 4

In HP2020, six fields stood at the centre: the practice of a healthy life, the management of chronic disease, the management of infectious disease, safety and environmental health, the health management of population groups, and the management of the project system. Across all 31 priority tasks, various goals were developed in order to raise the level of health and to improve health equity. A process of selecting representative indicators among the goals of the priority tasks is described: candidate indicators were received for the priority tasks in each of the six fields, and a survey was conducted of all subcommittee members.

The notes also record 357 performance indicators. The main fields of work for reaching the goals of extending healthy life expectancy and improving health equity are divided into two kinds: tasks that concern health-management projects aimed directly at those goals, and tasks that concern the means and the project system for carrying those projects out effectively. The purpose of the work, they write, follows Article 4 of the National Health Promotion Act, on the establishment of the comprehensive plan: to evaluate the people’s level of health and the effects of health policy through the monitoring and evaluation of performance indicators, and to derive a national health-promotion strategy and secure grounds for developing health-promotion policy. The people addressed are the Ministry of Health and Welfare, ministries related to national health promotion, local governments, related specialists, and citizens.

Choi Eun-jin (2010) is cited for the statement that the priority tasks of the six fields, excluding an overall subcommittee, total 31. Those figures stay in the plan as the notes and that 2010 citation give them, and are not treated here as a later official total. As basic strategies of implementation, the notes add, the spirit of the WHO Bangkok Charter was to be reflected: advocacy, investment, the building of capacity, the making and enforcement of law and regulation, and the formation of partnerships or the building of solidarity. Health promotion, in their telling, pursues a comprehensive idea of health — physical, mental, social, and spiritual — and applies the idea, valued in the definition of health promotion, that each member takes an active part in managing their own health, and that health may be enjoyed equally as a basic right.

What each field takes as its priority tasks

Among the fields, the spread of the practice of a healthy life is treated as it is because people’s habits of life are closely tied to the onset and the course of chronic degenerative disease, and are now regarded as the most important, original determinants of health. Among those habits, the notes say, smoking cessation, moderate drinking, exercise, and nutrition — those most closely related to chronic disease — are the most central tasks. In prevention-centred management of illness, the field pursued is the preventive management of diseases that already show a high prevalence, or that cause early death, and for which prevalence and early death can be lowered through preventive care. As priority tasks related to chronic disease, the notes list cancer, cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, obesity, mental health, and oral health. Because new infectious diseases that did not exist before have been appearing, they write, the first thing in connection with infectious disease is to have a system of vaccination and of quarantine measures; tuberculosis and AIDS, which continue to show a high prevalence and also raise a concern about contagion, have likewise been selected as priority tasks.

Environmental health management is the field of managing the social and physical environments related to health care; food safety such as food poisoning, the prevention of injury, and health-impact assessment were selected as central tasks. Health management by population group includes, by stages of the life cycle, mothers, infants and young children, and older people as central tasks. By setting, it includes groups that share relatively common health problems and are easy to reach — namely workers and students. On another side, in order to pursue the overall aim of “improving equity,” it includes home-visit health that takes multicultural families and vulnerable families as its main people, and vulnerable groups including people with disabilities.

In order to expand the project system and manage it effectively, and to seek the carrying-out of various health-management projects, the notes include, as a plan needed for the effective implementation of the means, the operating system of the work, information and statistics, evaluation, and finance. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Notes on Korea’s National Health Promotion Comprehensive Plans, from the 1995 Act through the first plan in 2002, the second in 2005, and the third (HP2020) in 2010, with those years left in place.
2. Six fields, 31 priority tasks, and 357 performance indicators, with Choi Eun-jin (2010) cited for the count of tasks, and with Article 4 of the Act as the purpose of the work.
3. Priority tasks in each field, from smoking cessation, moderate drinking, exercise, and nutrition to new infectious diseases, environmental health, and equity for vulnerable groups.

Last updated: 14 November 2026