SEOUL (Bloomberg): South Korea’s trainee doctors began returning to hospitals on Monday, ending an unprecedented 18-month walkout that had left operating rooms short-staffed, procedures postponed and patient backlogs growing.
The strike began in February 2024 when more than 10,000 doctors - including interns and residents - walked off the job in protest of a government plan to more than double medical school admissions by 2035.
The proposal, initiated by former President Yoon Suk Yeol to ease a chronic shortage of doctors, sparked fierce opposition from physicians and medical students.
In March this year, the government scrapped the plan in an effort to lure the doctors back, but the move drew only a lukewarm response. The students decided to end the strike after President Lee Jae Myung took office in June, and with the health ministry reaching a deal last month that allowed trainees to return without penalty and let hospitals take them on even beyond their official quotas.
Major hospitals - many of which had been postponing surgeries and appointments, and struggling with staff burnout - quickly began recruiting returnees for a new residency term that started Sept. 1.
The Korean Intern Resident Association, which represents the trainee doctors, couldn’t immediately comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
Interim leader Han Sung-jon told training hospital chiefs last week that a "significant number” of residents would be back, thanking those who had stayed on to care for patients during the walkout.
The return of the trainees marks the end of one of the longest labor disputes in South Korea’s medical sector, during which doctors pushed for higher pay, better working conditions and more resources for hospitals still stretched thin after the pandemic.
South Korea has one of the lowest doctor-to-population ratios among developed nations, a problem set to worsen as the population ages. The strike underscored those vulnerabilities, leaving military doctors and nurses to fill critical gaps.
Doctors say that simply expanding medical school admissions would lower the quality of training and drive down wages, without addressing the shortages in essential yet less lucrative specialties such as emergency and pediatric care.
Yoon’s push for raising the number of doctors initially garnered public support, but he was blamed for exacerbating the rift with stiff responses, with the number of resident doctors plunging to its lowest level in years.
-- With assistance from Heesu Lee and Denny Thomas. -- ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
