South Korea Threatens Arrest of Striking Medical Doctors Who Refuse to Return
South Korea Government is threatening to take legal action against thousands of striking junior doctors and revoke their medical license if they do not return to work on Thursday.
Around three quarters of the country’s junior doctors have walked out of their jobs over the past week, causing disruption and delays to surgeries at major teaching hospitals.
The trainee doctors are protesting government plans to admit drastically more medical students to university each year, to increase the number of doctors in the system.
The Vice-Health Minister Park Min-Soo has said those who miss the deadline will also have their license suspended for a minimum of three months.
The government has said it will start proceedings on Monday.
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On Sunday, the Korean Medical Association will vote on whether senior doctors should join the trainee physicians.
If swathes of their junior colleagues have been arrested, they will be more likely to act.
Patience with the doctors is running out from both the public and the healthcare workers needing to pick up the extra work.
Nurses have warned they are being forced to carry out procedures in operating theatres that would normally fall to their doctor colleagues.
Ms Choi, a nurse at a hospital in Incheon, told the BBC her shifts had been extended by an hour and a half each day and she was now doing the work of two people.
The patients are anxious, and I am frustrated that this is continuing without an end in sight, she said, urging the doctors to come back to work and find another way to demonstrate their grievances.
Under the government’s proposals, the number of medical students admitted to university next year would rise from 3,000 to 5,000.
The striking doctors argue that training more physicians would dilute the quality of care, because it would mean giving medical licenses to less competent practitioners.
But the doctors are struggling to convince the public that more doctors would be a bad thing and have garnered little sympathy.
At Seoul’s Severance Hospital on Tuesday, 74-year-old Mrs Lee was receiving treatment for colon cancer, having travelled for over an hour to get there.
