South Korean Doctors Walk Out, Protesting Plan to Increase Their Ranks

More than 1,500 medical interns and residents in South Korea walked off the job on Tuesday, disrupting an essential service to protest the government’s plan to address a shortage of doctors by admitting more students to medical school.

While South Korea takes pride in its affordable health care system, it has among the fewest physicians per capita in the developed world. Its rapidly aging population underscores the acute need for more doctors, according to the government, especially in rural parts of the country and in areas like emergency medicine.

The protesters, who are doctors in training and crucial for keeping hospitals running, say the shortage of doctors is not industrywide but confined to particular specialties, like emergency care. They say the government is ignoring the issues that have made working in those areas unappealing: harsh working conditions and low wages for interns and residents.

Surveys have found that in a given week, doctors in training regularly work multiple shifts that last longer than 24 hours, and that many are on the job for more than 80 hours a week.

The protesting doctors also say that by increasing the number of physicians, the government risks creating more competition that could lead to the overtreatment of patients.

Early this month, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration announced a plan to raise the nation’s medical school admissions quota by 65 percent. Licenses to practice medicine are regulated by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The plan was immediately criticized by doctors, who took to the streets with signs that read “end of health care.” Trainee doctors at five of the biggest hospitals in Seoul, where most of the country’s people live, submitted resignations on Monday and left their posts at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.