< Anchor>
The Ministry of Welfare issued an official statement today (5th) regarding our report that a 18-year-old child who went around the hospital to receive medical treatment during the
Children's Day holiday ended up dying. They said the child didn't die in the emergency room, but the facts are wrong, and the ministry in charge is trying to avoid responsibility rather than come up with a solution.

Reporter Kim Min-jun reports.

<Reporter>
The parents of the
deceased child clearly remembered the emergency room hit-and-run situation the day before his death.

[Father of the deceased child (reported on the 16th): (The paramedic) went into the emergency room and (talked) with the person in charge, but he said that he had to wait for a long time for 4~5 hours....]

The first paramedics arrived at Hospital A at 5:6 p.m. on May 10.

The emergency room call was two minutes later, at 38:2 a.m., and it remains in the hospital records.

While waiting in front of this hospital, I called 10 more places but they refused to accept me.

I was transferred to the fourth hospital because I couldn't be admitted, but I was able to get medical care.

The Department of Human Services said it had identified the "basic facts" on its own, but omitted them from the release.

He concluded that he had not actually been to several emergency rooms, but had checked over the phone, so he had not died in the emergency room transfer.

It's hard to avoid the suspicion that the ER hit-and-run was so intellectual burdened that it distorted the facts themselves.

In fact, when SBS reported that they had visited two emergency rooms, an official from the Ministry of Health and Welfare said, "We have confirmed the facts, but I don't think we need to put that in the press release."

It took four and a half hours later for the data to be corrected, but they still insisted that even if there had been an emergency room hit-and-run, if they died the next day, it wasn't a hit-and-run death.

The crux of the emergency room hit-and-run problem is not how many ambulances you have moved from one hospital to another, whether you went there in person, or whether you asked over the phone, but that you are lost in the ability to find available beds and do not get the right care.

The Welfare Department's attitude of thinking only about the size of its responsibilities rather than facing the problem raises concerns about whether a viable alternative can emerge.

(Video reporter: Bae Moon-san, Kim Nam-nam, Video editing: Lee Sang-min)