South Korea arrests trainee doctor over ‘blacklist’ of non-striking colleagues

A South Korean doctor has been arrested for allegedly creating and distributing a “blacklist” of colleagues who are not taking part in an ongoing walkout over medical training reforms, media reports and a doctors’ organisation said on Saturday.

The case marks the first arrest of a trainee doctor in more than six months of conflict between the government and junior medical practitioners over the prolonged work stoppage, which has resulted in the deaths of some emergency patients.

The doctor was arrested on Friday for allegedly creating a list with the names and personal information of colleagues who had either returned to work or otherwise abandoned the walkout, then repeatedly distributing it with malicious intent through applications like Telegram.

The head of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), South Korea’s leading doctors’ body, met with the detained trainee at a police station in Seoul on Saturday, saying afterwards that the government was to blame for the situation.

“I believe that everyone on the blacklist, as well as the arrested trainee doctor, is a victim,” KMA chief Lim Hyun-taek told reporters.