South Korea’s Yoon urges doctors to end standoff over traineeships

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Monday his government is ready for talks with doctors who oppose his plan to expand medical school admissions, while he slammed critics over the shortage of doctors. Accused of not giving any reasonable option to mitigate.

In a 50-minute address to the nation, Yun expressed for the first time a willingness to compromise on his medical reform proposals after the government called for talks with striking doctors.

Yoon apologized for the inconvenience caused by the ongoing strike of trainee doctors, but accused the medical sector of putting its own interests before public health.

“If you come up with a more fair and reasonable solution, we can discuss it as much as we want,” he said. “If you present better opinions and rational basis, government policy may change for the better.”

More than 90% of the country’s 13,000 trainee doctors have been on walkout since February 20 in protest against the government’s plan to increase the medical school intake from 3,000 to 2,000 by 2025.

South Korea had 2.6 doctors per 1,000 people in 2022, with a population of 52 million, well below the average of 3.7 for Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Previous governments have devised measures to deal with the growing shortage of doctors in essential services, including pediatric and emergency units as well as clinics outside the greater Seoul area, but their efforts failed in the face of strong opposition from the medical sector.

Some medical professionals have said that the Yun administration has failed to consult beforehand, and that its plan will do nothing to fix the existing situation, including low pay for trainee doctors.

Yoon refuted many of the claims from doctors’ groups and highlighted why medical reform is necessary.

“After maintaining silence on the government’s request to provide specific numbers for the medical school quota, the medical community is now trumpeting numbers like 350, 500 and 1,000 without any basis,” he said.

“If they want to argue that the scale of the increase should be reduced, they should propose a unifying idea with solid scientific evidence rather than taking collective action.”

(Reporting by Hyeonhee Shin; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters,