Interns, residents begin mass resignations as strike begins

Social Affairs

Published: 16 Feb. 2024, 17:31

Interns, residents begin mass resignations as strike begins

Medical professionals at a university hospital in Seoul on Feb. 14. [YONHAP]

Interns and residents at the top five hospitals of the country said they would resign by Monday, starting a mass strike against the government plan to expand medical school admissions.

The hospitals in question are Seoul National University Hospital, Severance Hospital, Samsung Medical Center, Asan Medical Center and the Catholic University of Korea Seoul St. Mary's Hospital.

The interns and residents of the hospitals will submit their resignation letters by Monday evening and stop all work by 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

The medical system was paralyzed during the last general strike in 2020 when around 80 percent of practicing interns and residents refused to come to work.

Some interns and residents began submitting their resignation letters on Friday, including all 58 interns at the Catholic University of Korea Seoul St. Mary's Hospital.

As of midnight Thursday, 154 interns and residents across seven hospitals had submitted their resignation letters, according to the Health Ministry.

Park Min-soo, second vice minister of health, speaks with reporters on Friday. [YONHAP]

The Health Ministry has banned hospitals from processing the resignation letters.

On Friday, the ministry issued a directive to some 220 hospitals hiring interns and residents to stop granting holidays to the interns and residents and to maintain the minimum medical staff necessary for patients.

It began collecting the list of interns and residents who refused to show up at work on Friday, with plans to contact them directly to ask them to return to work.

If the medical professionals refuse to return, their licenses could be suspended for up to a year. They can even face up to three years in prison.

Medical professionals sentenced to jail can have their licenses revoked permanently.

Park Min-soo, second vice minister of health, told reporters on Friday that any medical professional who takes collective action “at the risk of patients’ lives and health” will be punished per the law.

“There will be no restorations like in 2020,” he added, referring to how the Health Ministry filed complaints against 10 interns and residents for going on strike in 2020 but dropped the complaints later.

“This time, the government will act automatically, and there will be no restorations,” he said.

Medical school students may join the strike.

A total of 35 medical school student presidents agreed in a meeting on Thursday evening that they would all submit by Feb. 20 a request to take a semester off.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government announced last week that it would increase the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 next year, marking the first hike since 1998, to ensure medical services are provided equally throughout the country, especially in rural areas.

The decision sparked a fierce backlash among doctors, who claim that fixing the current system, including better salaries, would be more effective in encouraging doctors to work in rural areas and less popular essential medical fields.

Doctors rallied nationwide on Thursday, calling for the government to repeal its plan.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]