SKorean police quiz first doctor over walkouts
Police in South Korea on Wednesday called in a doctor for questioning, the first to be summoned in connection with a mass walkout of junior physicians as the government approved the use of millions of dollars to ease service disruptions.
Thousands of trainee doctors quit and stopped working some two weeks ago to protest the government’s plans to increase medical school admissions to help deal with the East Asian country’s fast-aging society.
The government has repeatedly urged doctors to return to work, but after a February 29 deadline passed with no change, Seoul said it was moving to suspend the medical licenses of the striking doctors and called for investigations into the organizers.
The doctors’ walkouts are “illegal collective action that violates people’s rights to life,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, adding that the government would use some 128.5 billion won ($96 million) of state reserves to minimize medical service disruptions.
The Korean Medical Association (KMA), which has been at the forefront of the protest, claiming the reforms would erode service quality, has seen its offices raided, and its top members have sued over medical law violations and been slapped with travel bans.
The KMA’s Joo Soo-ho has been accused of “aiding and abetting” the protests and appeared at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency for questioning on Wednesday.
“I came here with ease because literally I have nothing to hide, [no] reasons to hide,” the 65-year-old surgeon told reporters before he went inside.
“The charge of instigation can’t be established because we have never instigated” the junior doctors to quit en masse, he said.
He also said the doctors’ protest was “nonviolent” and urged the government to renounce its “stubbornness” and negotiate.
The Wednesday questioning is the first police probe into any medical personnel in connection with the ongoing walkouts.
‘Respond sternly’
Yoon said the new funds would be earmarked to ensure “stable management of emergency treatments.”
The Finance Ministry said the money could be used to pay staff to work overtime, cover the costs of dispatching military doctors to civilian hospitals or hire temporary medical staff.
“We have no choice but to respond sternly to illegal collective action that takes people’s lives hostage in accordance with laws and principles,” the president said.
“As I have stressed many times, medical reform is a task that cannot be delayed anymore,” he added.
The government is pushing to admit 2,000 more students to medical schools annually starting next year to address what it calls one of the lowest doctor-to-population ratios among developed nations.
Despite risking license suspension, the striking doctors have not returned to work on any considerable scale, government data show.
As of Monday, nearly 9,000 trainee doctors remained on walkouts, official figures show, a number that has not significantly changed over the last two weeks.
The mass work stoppage has taken a toll on hospitals, with crucial treatments and surgeries canceled, prompting the government to raise its public health alert to the highest level.
About half of the surgeries scheduled at some major hospitals have been canceled since last week, the Health Ministry said.