Sitting at a console in Seoul, a Korean doctor successfully operated on a pig using a surgical robot about 870 kilometers away in Shanghai, marking Korea’s first cross-border telesurgery demonstration using a commercial platform. Kang Seok-ho, a professor of urology at Korea University College of Medicine, says the technology could profoundly transform surgical care, allowing doctors to operate from distant facilities and across borders, including on patients in disaster zones and battlefields. “I was delighted. I also found it remarkable that I could actually perform surgery in Shanghai from here,” Kang said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. The demonstration was conducted on Friday at Coex in Seoul during the Korean Urological Association’s annual meeting. The Toumai system developed by China’s MicroPort MedBot was used, according to the hospital. Telesurgery allows a physician to control surgical instruments through a communications network rather than being physically present in the same surgery as the patient. Unlike remote consultations, it involves the surgeon