Prof. Kim is the Chairman of Department of Surgery, Korea University Hospital, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. He has been especially interested in minimally invasive colorectal surgery during the past 20 years. He obtained a research fellowship for colorectal laparoscopic surgery at the Department of Colorectal Surgery of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH in 1995–1997 and received the outstanding surgical research fellow award.
Prof. Kim has performed more than 2,000 laparoscopic colon and rectal operations mainly for cancer. He then became used to “robot” after his the first case of robotic rectal cancer resection late 2007. Actually he embraced the technique so well that he developed single-docking fully robotic low anterior resection and performed around 500 cases using this technique (1). He has been doing many live robotic and laparoscopic surgeries demonstrated at various international congresses, and telecasted to oversea hospitals.
Besides a skilled surgeon, Prof. Kim is currently the Chairman of the Korean Society of Endoscopic and Laparoscopic Surgeons (KSELS, 2014-2016), and the President of Korean Association of Robotic Surgeons (KAROS, 2013-2015). He is also a visiting professor worldwide, including National University Hospital in Singapore, Royal Brisbane Hospital in Australia, Chinese University of Hong Kong, National Cheng Gong University in Taiwan, Kumamoto University in Japan, Karolinska University in Stockholm, Sweden, and University of Western Sydney, Australia.
In the ELSA 2015 conference in Daegu, we are honored to invite Prof. Kim for an interview, sharing his stories with robotic surgery.
