Yoon vows not to yield to striking doctors
SEOUL — South Korea’s president vowed Monday not to back down in the face of vehement protests by doctors seeking to derail his plan to drastically increase medical school admissions, as he called their walkouts “an illegal collective action” that poses “a grave threat to our society”.
About 12,000 medical interns and residents in South Korea have been on strike for six weeks, causing hundreds of canceled surgeries and other treatments at university hospitals. In support of their action, many senior doctors at their teaching schools have also submitted resignations though they haven’t stopped treating patients.
Officials say they want to raise the yearly medical school cap by 2,000 from the current 3,058 to train more doctors to deal with the country’s rapidly aging population.
Doctors counter that schools can’t handle such an abrupt increase in students and that it would eventually hurt the country’s medical services. But critics say doctors, one of the best-paid professions in South
Korea, are simply worried that the supply of more doctors would result in lower future incomes.
In a nationally televised address, President Yoon Suk-yeol said that adding 2,000 medical students is the minimum increase needed to address a shortage of physicians in rural areas, the military and essential services, including pediatrics and emergency departments.
Yoon said South Korea’s doctorto-patient ratio — 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people — is far below the average of 3.7 in the developed world.
“Increasing the number of doctors is a state project that we can’t further delay,” Yoon said.
Calling for responsibility
Yoon urged the striking doctors to return to work, saying they have a responsibility to protect people’s lives in line with the local medical law.
He also said the government remains open to talks if doctors come up with a unified proposal that adequately explains their calls for a much smaller increase in the medical school enrollment quota.
“I can’t tolerate an attempt to carry through their thoughts by force without due logic and grounds,” Yoon said. “The illegal collective action by some doctors has become a grave threat to our society.”
Later on Monday, the Korean Medical Association, which represents doctors in South Korea, criticized Yoon for repeating what his government has already argued to support the recruitment plan.
“It was an address that brought us greater disappointment because we had high hopes” for some changes in the government’s position, Kim Sunggeun, a spokesperson for KMA’s emergency committee, told reporters.
The Korean Intern Resident Association, a major group representing junior doctors, said the 2,000 figure was both scientifically groundless and politically motivated to garner votes in the upcoming parliamentary election on April 10.