Senior doctors in South Korea to submit resignations, deepening dispute over medical school plan

SEOUL, South Korea – Senior doctors at dozens of hospitals in South Korea planned to submit their resignations Monday in support of medical interns and residents who have been on a strike for five weeks over the government’s push to sharply increase medical school admissions, their leader said.

The senior doctors’ action won’t likely cause an immediate worsening of hospital operations in South Korea because they have said they would continue to work even after submitting their resignations. But prospects for an early end to the medical impasse were also dim, as the doctors’ planned action comes after President Yoon Suk Yeol called for talks with doctors while suggesting a possible softening of punitive steps against the striking junior doctors.

About 12,000 interns and medical residents have faced impending suspensions of their licenses over their refusal to end their strikes, which have caused hundreds of cancelled surgeries and other treatments at their hospitals.

They oppose the government’s plan to increase the country’s medical school admission cap by twothirds, saying schools can’t handle such a steep increase in students and that it would eventually hurt South Korea’s medical services. But officials say more doctors are urgently needed because South Korea has a rapidly aging population and its doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world.

In a meeting with ruling party leader Han Dong-hoon on Sunday, representatives of medical professors and doctors at some 40 university hospitals – where the junior doctors work while training – expressed support for the striking doctors, saying the government’s recruitment plan “would collapse our country’s medical system,” Kim Chang-soo, head of the emergency committee at those universities, said Monday.