As the Korean medicine community pushes back against the government and the insurance industry's proposed "8-week rule," the two sides are sparring over statistics related to herniated intervertebral discs (discs). The Korean medicine community claims insurers classified patients with severe, grade-9 disc injuries as minor-injury patients, but the government and insurers counter that the Korean medicine community's argument is contradictory.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, 1.49 million people received treatment for minor injuries from car accidents in 2024. Of these, 1.36 million, or about 91%, finished treatment within eight weeks. Because most minor-injury treatments end within eight weeks, the ministry is pursuing the so-called "8-week rule," which would limit insurer-paid treatment to eight weeks. Those seeking treatment beyond eight weeks would need to submit medical records and undergo a medical review to determine whether an extension is justified.
The Korean medicine community argues that insurers distorted statistics by classifying patients with severe, grade-9 disc injuries as grade-12 sprains (pain caused by ligament damage), which are minor injuries. It said insurers recognize only sprains because it is hard to prove whether a disc herniation resulted from a car accident or existed before the accident.
An Association of Korean Medicine (AKOM) official said, "There are many cases where a sprain is not a minor injury. Car accidents involve multiple injuries caused by unexpected external impact and show a different pathology than ordinary sprains."
The insurance industry says some Korean medicine clinics push disc claims to obtain insurance payouts, and that genuinely severe disc cases are unlikely to be classified as minor. It also notes that severe cases have longer treatment periods than minor cases, so if, as claimed by the Korean medicine community, severe cases were being classified as minor, the overall treatment period would lengthen, weakening the rationale for introducing the "8-week rule." Classifying severe cases as minor would yield statistics favorable to the Korean medicine community, meaning its claims are inconsistent.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) said the figures would not change much even if it recalculated the statistics excluding disc patients identified by the Korean medicine community as problematic. Excluding 106,000 patients with disc-related diagnoses from the 2024 minor-injury cohort, the total number of minor-injury patients was 1.38 million, with 1.26 million (91%) finishing treatment within eight weeks.
A Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) official said, "Even if the claim that minor-injury classifications were wrong is true, over 90% of minor-injury patients still complete treatment within eight weeks."
The government and the insurance industry say that because of some "nylon patients" (slang for fake patients), the burden on all policyholders is rising. If insurers overpay benefits and losses grow, premiums for all policyholders increase.