The World Briefly
March 05, 2024In or Out
South Korea
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South Korea’s government on Monday began acting on their threats of suspending the medical licenses of thousands of striking junior doctors who failed to meet an ultimatum to return to work, as the walkouts have impacted the country’s healthcare sector, the Associated Press reported.
More than 7,000 trainee doctors face having their licenses suspended, two weeks after they vacated their posts to protest a government plan to increase the number of admissions at medical schools. The large-scale movement has caused hundreds of surgeries to be canceled.
Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo urged the doctors “to return to patients by not ignoring the pains of patients hovering between life and death – and their families.” Empowered by South Korea’s medical law, Seoul had ordered them to return to work by Feb. 29, citing risks to public health.
Striking junior doctors dismissed the government’s call, leading to Monday’s decision to begin steps toward suspending licenses for at least three months.
The government started sending officials to hospitals to formally attest to the doctors’ absence. Striking doctors will then be notified of the expected suspension of their licenses and will get a chance to respond. Park explained the process could take weeks.
In addition to suspending licenses for up to a year, striking doctors who fail to comply with back-to-work orders face a three-year jail sentence or a $22,500 fine.
The strike was triggered by an announcement last month that medical schools would host an extra 2,000 students on top of their current 3,058 placements, starting next year. Seoul argued the measure was aimed at tackling South Korea’s fast-aging population, the shortage of physicians outside of cities, and its low doctor-to-population ratio – one of the lowest in the developed world.
However, doctors have warned this would disrupt the quality of the education delivered by medical schools and increase competition, leading to higher public expenses.
Nonetheless, critics of the strike have said a core cause for the anger was the doctors’ worry that their incomes would decrease.
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