Precision medicine depends on linking large volumes of genomic data to clinical and health information at population scale, and many advanced economies have launched national genome programs to build that foundation. Korea's answer is the national bio big-data initiative — long known as the One Million Genomes Project and now formally the National Integrated Bio Big Data project (국가통합바이오빅데이터 구축사업). Junghwan Park, as a Ministry of Health and Welfare official, planned this initiative; his work was in the early design and groundwork that a national-scale genomic effort requires.
The realized program is a large, multi-agency national undertaking. It is led jointly by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and its full build-out phase was launched in December 2024. The project integrates clinical information, public data, and genetic data on an individual basis, built entirely on citizens' voluntary participation and consent: participants visit recruitment institutions around the country to complete consent and surveys and to provide biological samples alongside their clinical information.
Its ambition is large and staged. The first phase (2024–2028) aims to recruit on the order of three-quarters of a million participants — including people with rare diseases, people with severe diseases, and the general public — with later phases building toward bio big data from a total of one million people. Genomic data is to be released to qualified external researchers on a phased basis, so the resource can support research, clinical translation, and a domestic bio-health industry rather than sitting unused.
The significance lies in infrastructure: population-scale, consented bio data is a prerequisite for precision medicine and for genomics-informed care. Park's contribution belongs to the planning that helped set this in motion; the program itself is the work of many ministries, agencies, hospitals, and participants over years. Seen that way, the project marks part of where Korea's national bio big-data foundation was first designed.