Gov't to respond to ILO concerning back-to-work orders for junior doctors

An elderly patient lies on a bench as she waits to see a doctor at a university hospital in Daegu on Friday. [YONHAP]

The International Labour Organization (ILO) on Thursday asked for the Korean government's opinion after a group representing Korea's junior doctors doubled down on its request for the agency’s intervention in the country's ongoing dispute over the planned expansion of the medical recruitment quota.

Seoul’s Labor Ministry said it plans to respond “vigorously” to the ILO’s letter, which was sent after the Korean Intern and Resident Association (KIRA) sent a petition to the United Nations agency on March 13 calling the government’s back-to-work order for striking doctors a violation of the Forced Labour Convention.

Although the ILO initially dismissed KIRA’s request on grounds of ineligibility, the junior doctors’ group re-requested that the ILO intervene on March 15, explaining that it is the only Korean organization that represents junior doctors on strike.

The Forced Labour Convention, which is one of the ILO’s eight fundamental conventions, defines forced labor as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the person has not offered himself voluntarily.”

The Labor Ministry said it plans to explain to the ILO that the government’s back-to-work order “is a legitimate measure to protect people’s lives and is thus an exception to the convention’s provisions.”

Over 90 percent of Korea’s 13,000 junior doctors have remained on strike since Feb. 20 to protest the government’s plan to increase the medical school admissions quota by 2,000 spots from the current limit of 3,058, which has been frozen since its last reduction in 2006.

The Health Ministry was originally set to suspend the licenses of junior doctors who have remained off the job beginning on Tuesday.

Under Korean medical law, doctors who defy the Health Ministry’s back-to-work order can face up to three years in prison or a fine of 30 million won ($22,480), as well as license suspensions of up to one year. Doctors who are handed prison sentences automatically lose their licenses.

The ongoing walkout has already resulted in lengthy delays in scheduling procedures at larger hospitals, which rely heavily on interns and residents to assist senior doctors with surgeries and inpatient treatment.

Medical school professors, who play a central role in training junior doctors and overseeing fellows at teaching hospitals, resolved last week to resign en masse if the government made good on its threat to suspend the strikers’ licenses.

Officials said on Monday that the government had “tentatively deferred” license suspensions to facilitate talks with the medical community that are “aimed at finding lenient solutions” to the current impasse.

However, the Yoon Suk Yeol administration has stuck to its position that the medical school admissions quota must be increased by 2,000 spots to avert a looming doctor shortage in talks with the Korean Medical Association (KMA), the country’s largest doctors’ group.

In a briefing on Wednesday, Kim Taek-woo, chief of the KMA’s emergency leadership committee, said that "no real progress" had been made despite several meetings over the past week and that both sides merely “reaffirmed the gap between their positions” during talks.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]