Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)
government ministry in South Korea
The Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW previously MW, Korean: 보건복지부) is a branch of the government of South Korea. The headquarters is in Sejong City. Previously the headquarters were on floors 6 through 12 of the Hyundai Building in Jongno District, Seoul, when they were the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.
Developments
On December 23, 1994, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (보건사회부) changed their name to Ministry of Health and Welfare. On February 29, 2008, the ministry merged the National Youth Commission, Prime Minister's Office of Korea, the Family Affairs from Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and Centre on Measures for Bipolarization and Livelihood, Ministry of Planning and Budget to become the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs (보건복지가족부).
However, on March 19, 2010, the Ministry was reorganized to become the Ministry of Health and Welfare while transferring their responsibilities of overseeing youth and family affairs to Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. However, the Ministry of Health and Welfare still governs Children's affairs.
With the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislation has been introduced and passed to expand one of its child agencies, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, into Korea Disease Control and Prevention Administration and to equip the Ministry with two Vice-Ministers - one responsible for welfare and the other public health. These changes will come to effect on 12 September 2020.
In September 2024, South Korea's health ministry announced that it was deploying military doctors to assist in some hospital emergency rooms due to a shortage of medical staff due to a doctors strike.
“Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)” enters the record as government ministry in South Korea. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ministry, Health and Welfare can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ministry, Health and Welfare provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q482921. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2008, 2010 and 2020.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea) primary sources, Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea) archive and Ministry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)”?
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Ministry of Health and Welfare (South Korea)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.