Doctors at medical facilities across South Korea walked off the job in a one-day strike on Tuesday, a brief but dramatic escalation of months of protests against government health policies that began in February when residents and interns at major hospitals walked off the job.
The doctors who took part in the one-day strike are members of the Korean Medical Association, South Korea's largest doctors' group, with some 140,000 members. The number of participants was not immediately clear, but the association said its members recently voted 3-1 in favor of the collective action.
South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol called the strike “very unfortunate and regrettable” during a televised cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning. It came a day after hundreds of medical professors at Seoul National University Hospital and other major institutions began an indefinite walkout.
“I came to get an ultrasound because my liver is bad,” Yang Myeong-ju, an 84-year-old patient at Seoul National University Hospital, said Tuesday. She said her appointment was canceled and she was not offered a new date. “Doctors deal with people's lives. Is it right to go on strike?”
The controversy began in January when the Yoon administration unveiled new health-care policies that included a plan to dramatically increase medical school enrollment. Doctors say the plan was drafted without consulting them and will not solve the health-care system's problems. But the government says South Korea desperately needs more doctors, as it has fewer doctors per capita than most developed countries.
Neither side has made many concessions. In May, the government set the medical school admissions quota at 4,570 for the 2025 academic year, an increase of about 1,500, less than the 2,000 originally proposed but still a significant increase. This announcement appears to have triggered the recent labor disputes.
“The government still refuses to admit its mistakes, pushes ahead with flawed policies and blames the medical community,” Lim Hyun-taek, president of the Korean Medical Association, said at a meeting with association leaders last week. Lim said the Yoon administration has long ignored the grueling hours and low wages endured by doctors in pediatrics and other critical fields.
The health system has been strained since February but has not collapsed. To fill gaps in services, the government has sent in military doctors and asked nurses to take on some of the tasks normally done by doctors. The government said this week that it is running hundreds of emergency rooms across the country and is developing contingency plans in case the conflict drags on.
In a recent statement, Prime Minister Han Deok-soo said the doctors' strike would “leave a deep scar on society and destroy the trust that has been built up over decades between doctors and patients.”
Many in the public have also criticized the strike, accusing doctors of trying to protect their elite status by keeping their numbers low. The backlash has also extended to the medical industry itself, where unionized hospital workers rallied in Seoul last week, calling on doctors to call off a one-day strike on Tuesday. “Delayed treatments and surgeries are painful for patients and a great pain for hospital workers who are plagued by endless inquiries and complaints,” a union statement said.
Kang Hee-kyung, a pediatrician at Seoul National University Hospital who heads a committee of medical professors who have been terminated from their positions at the hospital, stressed at a recent press conference that the move was a last resort and that patients who need urgent treatment will be treated. “We apologize to patients with serious conditions and those with rare diseases,” she said.
The government has tried to encourage interns and residents who went on strike in February to return to work by withdrawing previous threats to suspend their licenses and promising not to penalize those who return. But only 7.5% of the roughly 14,000 interns and residents at 211 teaching hospitals showed up to work last week, according to Ministry of Health figures.
Protest leaders say the protests will only end if the government scraps plans to expand the medical school, but a health ministry spokesman said the 2025 admissions quota was non-negotiable. Patients are growing angry and losing hope for a quick resolution.
“It will probably take several months,” Yang said. “There's nothing I can do as a patient.”