South Korea's government has threatened to arrest thousands of junior doctors for staging a week-long protest and told them they had until the end of February to return to work.
Over the past week, around three-quarters of the country's junior doctors have left their jobs, disrupting and delaying surgeries at major teaching hospitals.
South Korea Warns Striking Doctors
Doctors shout slogans during a rally to protest against the government's plan to raise the annual enrolment quota at medical schools, near the Presidential Office in Seoul on February 25, 2024. South Korea has raised its public health alert to the highest level, authorities announced on February 23, saying health services were in crisis after thousands of doctors resigned over proposed medical reforms.
The trainee doctors are protesting government plans to accept more medical students to universities yearly to boost the number of doctors in the system. The government has warned that it could take legal action against doctors who do not comply with a back-to-work order, including prosecution, potential arrest, and stripping of their medical licenses.
South Korea has one of the lowest ratios of doctors to patients among developed countries. The government announced that there will be a severe shortage within a decade due to the growing aging population.
This week, the deserted corridors of St. Mary's Hospital in Seoul showed what that future might look like. Patients were advised to avoid the triage area outside the emergency department, which had barely any doctors or patients.
Ryu Ok Hada, a 25-year-old doctor, and his colleagues have not been to work at the hospital for over a week. The junior doctor told the BBC he was used to working over 100 hours a week, frequently working 40 hours straight without a break.
He argued that he and other young doctors could make less than the minimum wage given their work hours despite the relatively high salary of doctors in South Korea. He also claimed that adding more doctors would not address the structural issues within the healthcare system, leaving them overworked and underpaid.
Healthcare in South Korea is largely privatized but affordable. The doctors claimed that while the cost of less necessary treatments, including cosmetic surgery, is too high, the cost of emergency, life-saving, and specialized care has been set too low.
This indicates that more medical professionals opt to work in more lucrative fields in big cities, leaving rural areas understaffed and emergency rooms overstretched.
Furthermore, Ryu noted that university hospitals use junior doctors and trainees for low labor costs. They comprise over 40% of the staff in some larger hospitals, which is critical to their continued operation.
As a result, surgical capacity in several hospitals has decreased by half over the past week. The disruption has generally been restricted to scheduled procedures that have been postponed, with only a few isolated instances of critical care being affected.
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Patients Speak Out
On Tuesday, 74-year-old Mrs. Lee received treatment for colon cancer at Seoul's Severance Hospital after traveling for more than an hour. She said that there are no doctors outside the city where they live.
Lee's husband, Soon-dong, added that this problem has been kicked down the road for too long and needs to be fixed. He claimed that the doctors are being too selfish and they are taking the patients hostage.
The couple stated they would pay more for their care if the conflict would be resolved, as they were concerned that more doctors would join the strike.
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