SEOUL, South Korea — In the run-up to general elections in April, the government of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is escalating the biggest domestic fight it has yet faced.
With thousands of trainee doctors on the eighth day of a nationwide walkout, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong waved a big stick Monday, warning them that they would be “held accountable” for their “illegal collective action” if they did not return to their duties on Thursday.
Separately, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo dangled a carrot, saying that “if doctors return to hospitals by February 29, nobody will be held accountable.”
The day prior, Deputy Health Minister Park Min-soo had issued the Thursday ultimatum, saying that those who continued the walkout would have their medical licenses revoked for three months.
The blot on their records “may impact future career paths,” Mr. Park said. He further threatened them with investigation and prosecution.
The junior doctors, many of whom are interns or residents, have left their workplaces en masse, protesting government plans to increase the quota of medical students from next year.
At the start of the week, Yonhap News Agency reported that, of 13,000 nationwide, 9,006 have walked off their jobs and 10,034 have submitted their resignations.
While the country’s doctor pool is approximately 100,000 strong, the juniors are key players in public hospitals’ operations, notably in emergency rooms, intensive care and operating theaters.
Medical services nationwide are being slashed, with surgeries being cut by half. Reports are piling up of emergency patients being turned away by multiple hospitals.
In a crisis response, military hospitals have begun receiving civilian patients.
In addition to their objection to the quota, the medical community’s demands include higher pay, improved working conditions for overburdened junior doctors and stronger defense mechanisms against malpractice suits. They also say there needs to be better incentives for unpopular practice areas, such as pediatrics.
After small numbers of doctors demonstrated in Seoul on Sunday, the Korean Medical Association called the government ultimatum, “an unbelievable level of blackmail.”
The casus belli of the unrest is Seoul’s plan to raise the medical student quota by 2,000 places nationwide from 2025. That figure represents a major jump: The number of places has been capped at 3,058 per year since 2006.
Compared to other prosperous democracies, South Korea looks under-doctored. Per World Bank data, the country has 2.5 physicians per 100 people – behind France (3.3), Germany (4.5), Japan (2.6) and the United States (3.6).
It is not just democracies. South Korea’s number of doctors per capita even falls behind that of impoverished competitor North Korea, which has 3.7 doctors per 1,000 persons.
Making matters worse, South Korea is one of the fastest-aging societies on earth, generating increasing demand for medical services. Rural areas, in particular, face shortages of trained medical professionals.
The junior doctors hold the whip hand in hospitals, but the public is behind the government. The last Gallup poll on the issue found that 76% of respondents favor increased medical school quotas.
Medicine is an elite profession in most nations and particularly so in educational-centric, qualification-focused South Korea.
Doctors can earn big in private practice in the big cities, notably in cosmetic surgery, an area where South Korean doctors are among the world’s finest.
They also have unusual privileges. Tattoos, for example, are technically illegal unless conducted under medical supervision, a fact which infuriates tattoo artists, some of whom practice underground.
The government’s stance has won surprise support from a senior voice that has, in the political arena, customarily been raised against the right-wing party.
“I believe it is unacceptable that medical practitioners would leave the hospital on strike leaving their patients in the hospital,” Lee Nak-yon, who heads the newly formed “third force” Seamirae Party, told foreign reporters in Seoul Monday “I urge all medical practitioners to return to their posts as soon as possible.”
“I also believe the maximum capacity should be enhanced and enlarged,” Mr. Lee continued. However, he suggested a more gradual approach than the government’s and also suggested that a percentage of new quota places be guaranteed to rural areas.
A long-experienced, respected voice on the center-left, Mr. Lee has been at daggers drawn with the opposition Democratic Party’s current leader, firebrand Lee Jae-myung (no relation), to whom he lost the party primary in 2021.
That disconnect led him to break away from the Democratic Party and create Saemirae (“New Future”), which will contest the National Assembly elections – potentially splitting the left-wing vote.
That could be good news for Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party. Politically, the government’s battle on the medical quota may prove well-timed.
Mr. Yoon entered office in May 2022, meaning he is approximately halfway through his five-year term. Thus far, he has been hamstrung by an opposition-led National Assembly, but on April 10, Koreans go to the polls to vote in a new house.
A defeat on the day could further enfeeble Mr. Yoon, leading him toward the dreaded “lame duck” status. A victory would empower him for the remainder of his constitutionally mandated single term.