Striking SKorea doctors face license suspension
SEOUL: Thousands of striking junior doctors in South Korea face proceedings to suspend their medical licenses on Tuesday as authorities push for police investigations targeting leaders of the walkouts that have disrupted hospital operations.
Nearly 9,000 of South Korea’s 13,000 medical interns and residents have been refusing to work for the last two weeks to protest a government plan to enroll thousands more students in the East Asian country’s medical schools in the coming years. The government ordered them to return to work by February 29, citing a threat to public health, but most have defied threats of license suspensions and prosecutions.
“For those who lead the walkouts, we are thinking [of filing] complaints with [the] police,” Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told a briefing. “But I tell you that we haven’t determined exactly when we would do so and against whom.”
On Monday, the Health Ministry sent officials to hospitals to confirm the absences of the striking doctors and begin administrative steps to suspend their licenses. So far, the government has confirmed over 7,000 physicians as absent and will con
tinue on-site inspections of hospitals and begin sending notices to some strikers about license-suspension proceedings, Park said.
The minister also said the licenses would be suspended for at least three months, and doctors would be given opportunities to respond before this happens.
“The trainee doctors have left their patients defenseless. They’ve even left emergency rooms and intensive care units,” Park said. “We can’t tolerate these irresponsible acts. They have betrayed their professional and ethical responsibilities, and neglected their legal duties.”
Under South Korean medical law, doctors who defy orders to resume work can be punished with three years in prison or a 30-million-won (roughly $22,500) fine and have their medical licenses suspended for up to a year. Those who receive prison sentences can lose their licenses.
Observers say the government is likely to end up punishing only strike leaders, not all of the thousands of protesting doctors. It would take a few months to complete administrative steps to suspend the strikers’ licenses, they add.
At the heart of the dispute is a government plan to raise the country’s medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 starting next year, from the current 3,058. Officials said South Korea must add more doctors to deal with a fast-aging population. But many doctors say universities aren’t ready to deal with that abrupt increase and warn that the country’s overall medical service would suffer.
The striking junior physicians are a small fraction of the country’s 140,000 doctors, but they account for 30 to 40 percent of those at some major hospitals, where they assist senior doctors while in training.
Many senior doctors support the junior doctors but haven’t joined their walkouts.
South Korean police said they were investigating five senior members of the Korea Medical Association after the Health Ministry filed complaints against them for allegedly inciting and abetting the walkouts.