Jeju wins top prize in national disaster and emergency medical tabletop exercise for second straight year

【Financial News Jeju = Jeong Yong-bok】 A joint team representing Jeju’s public health centers, fire services and hospitals has won the top prize in the national disaster and emergency medical tabletop exercise for the second consecutive year.
According to Jeju Special Self-Governing Province on the 12th, the Jeju representative team won the National Medical Center President’s Award, the top prize in the tabletop exercise category, at the 2026 National Disaster and Emergency Medical Services Comprehensive Training Competition held on the 10th and 11th at the Jaeneung Education Training Center in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province.
The competition, hosted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and organized by the Central Emergency Medical Center of the National Medical Center, drew representative teams from 15 cities and provinces nationwide. Jeju was represented by 13 participants from the provincial government, public health centers, fire services, Jeju Halla Hospital and the Jeju Emergency Medical Support Center of the National Medical Center, among others.
The competition assessed the joint response capabilities of rapid response teams from public health centers, Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) and fire-service paramedics in a simulated scenario involving multiple casualties caused by a major disaster.
Tabletop exercises use plans, models and record sheets to carry out disaster response procedures instead of staging an actual incident. They assess the entire medical response process, including setting up an on-site emergency medical station, triaging patients by severity, providing emergency treatment, and distributing and transporting patients to different facilities.
Rapidly determining patients’ severity at a disaster site is a key step in deciding the order of treatment and which hospitals they will be transported to. This is especially important in Jeju, an island region, where a major accident requires patients to be distributed among hospitals based on local emergency medical facilities’ capacity, as well as close cooperation among the relevant agencies.
The Jeju representative team conducted a month of joint training ahead of the competition. With expert training and support from the National Medical Center’s Jeju Emergency Medical Support Center, the team assessed the division of roles among participating institutions and their ability to make decisions on site.
Jeju ranked first nationwide in comprehensive training exercises in 2022 and 2024, and also won the top prize in the tabletop exercise category last year. This means it has won the top tabletop exercise award for two consecutive years, through this year.
Jo Sangbeom, head of Jeju Province’s Safety and Health Office, said, “This achievement is the result of each institution preparing and working together,” adding, “We will continue to strengthen our disaster and emergency medical response capabilities through ongoing education and training and protect the lives and safety of residents.”


[email protected] Jeong Yong-bok Reporter