After 3,000 autopsies in nearly 30 years, Yoo sees life as movie

Having examined more than 3,000 bodies since 1999, Yoo Seong-ho, a professor of forensic medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine, has come to believe that life is like a movie. “A good death is living a good life,” Yoo said in an interview with The Korea Times. “Think of it like a film where the story is a mess from the start.

If only the ending has a twist, people will hate it.” Every Monday and Friday, Yoo performs autopsies referred by nine police precincts across Seoul from Jongno District to Yongsan District.

In 2024, some 359,000 people died in Korea, most of them in hospitals under medical care and therefore not requiring an autopsy.

The cases that come to Yoo are those where the cause of death is unknown or suspicious.

Depending on the criteria, that amounts to between 30,000 and 50,000 a year, of which around 9,000 actually go to autopsy.

Of Korea's 54 forensic pathologists, 34 work at the National Forensic Service (NFS) and 20 at universities, each handling roughly 180 cases a year.

Among them, Yoo may be the most publicly recognized, running the YouTu