The National Human Rights Commission said on the 14th that it conducted an ex officio investigation into incidents including a death caused by an assault between inpatients at Bangudae Hospital, a psychiatric medical institution in Ulsan, and reported the hospital director and the administrative director to prosecutors on suspicion of occupational negligence resulting in death.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) learned of the death by assault inside Bangudae Hospital during witness interviews and in February conducted a joint investigation with related agencies including the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ulsan City.
The investigation found that five inpatients at Bangudae Hospital had been reported as unnatural deaths from 2021 to 2025. Two people died from assaults in 2022 and 2024, two from traumatic brain hemorrhage in 2023, and one by suicide in 2022.
Bangudae Hospital claimed the accidents had no prior signs and could not have been anticipated. However, an additional 11 cases of patient-on-patient assault were found in six hours of closed-circuit (CC)TV footage filmed at the same location before a patient died from an assault in 2022. There was no sign of hospital staff intervening to prevent or stop the assaults.
Also, when the assaults occurred in 2022 and 2024, there were no hospital staff in the patient rooms and common areas where patients lived. In Ward 3, where a death occurred, only one nurse worked from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. the next day, and that remains the case now.
Regarding two patients who died of disease, the emergency transfer hospitals diagnosed the causes of death as "traumatic brain hemorrhage" and "cardiac arrest, unspecified." But Bangudae Hospital said they died from a brain hemorrhage and a thyroid disorder, respectively, and did not prepare a "patient safety incident (fall) report."
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) reported the case to prosecutors on suspicion of occupational negligence resulting in death, concluding that the deaths of patients reported as unnatural over the past five years stemmed from the actions of Bangudae Hospital's director and administrative director, who failed to fulfill their duty to protect safety and exercise due care.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said, "As a national human rights institution, we will do our utmost to ensure that inpatients at psychiatric medical institutions are not subjected to violations of human dignity during treatment in the future."