Daegu calls for fair site selection for national dental research institute

Daegu and the dental community, academia and industry of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province have called for a fair and transparent bidding process for the site selection of the National Dental Research Institute.

Daegu Mayor Choo Kyung-ho and local stakeholders issued a position statement and joint declaration Thursday at the city's Dong-in office building, calling for a full review of the site evaluation criteria proposed in a Ministry of Health and Welfare research study.

Daegu said it possesses the relevant infrastructure — including an advanced medical complex, dental university hospitals and cutting-edge dental companies — and ranks first among non-Greater Seoul regions in dental industry production and exports.

The city also cited its designation as the country's first dental regulation-free zone and its push to develop AI-based digital dentistry as key strengths.

Choo said the evaluation criteria in the recent Ministry of Health and Welfare research study fail to adequately reflect the region's research and industrial capabilities, and called for transparent disclosure of the criteria, their scoring rationale, and the evaluation process and results.

Choo also said the criteria should be redesigned around dental research capacity, clinical infrastructure, industrial concentration and contribution to balanced national development.

"The location of the National Dental Research Institute must be decided based on the future of Korean dentistry and industrial competitiveness," Choo said. "The industrial ecosystem linking research, clinical practice, certification and production — along with top talent and contribution to balanced national development — must serve as the core evaluation indicators."

The dental community, academia and industry of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province also issued a joint statement that day, saying the evaluation criteria were biased.

They said objective quantitative indicators — such as the number of dental companies by region, sales figures and value-added amounts — had been excluded, while a weighting of 16.8 percent was assigned to transportation accessibility and 14.7 percent to gross regional domestic product and population growth rate, raising concerns about the fairness and consistency of the evaluation.

They also called for a Ministry of Health and Welfare internal audit and a ground-up review of the evaluation criteria, citing procedural issues related to the contracting and re-subcontracting of the research firm that were raised at the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee national audit on Tuesday.

"The National Dental Research Institute must be decided on fair criteria and capability, not political logic," said Park Se-ho, head of the Daegu Bid Promotion Team for the National Dental Research Institute. "We will rally the strength of the local healthcare community and Daegu citizens until the biased research findings are withdrawn and a level playing field is established."