South Korea criticizes senior doctors for threatening to resign to support their juniors’ walkouts

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s government criticized senior doctors at a major hospital Tuesday for threatening to resign in support of the weekslong walkouts by thousands of medical interns and residents that have disrupted hospital operations.

About 12,000 junior doctors in South Korea have been off the job for a month to protest a government plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. Officials say the plan is meant to add more doctors to deal with the country’s rapidly aging society, but doctors say universities can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in the number of students, and that would eventually hurt the quality of South Korea’s medical services.

The government began steps a week ago to suspend the licenses of the striking doctors, after they missed a government-set Feb. 29 deadline for their return.

The walkouts now threaten to enter a critical phase as senior doctors at the Seoul National University Hospital and its affiliated hospitals decided Monday to resign en mass if the government doesn’t come up with measures that can address the dispute by early next week. Senior doctors at other major university hospitals could take similar steps.

“If the government doesn’t take steps toward sincere, reasonable measures to resolve the issue, we decided to submit resignations, starting from March 18,” Bang JaeSeung, leader of the Seoul hospital’s emergency committee, told reporters Monday.

But the committee’s decision doesn’t make participation mandatory, so it’s unclear how many doctors could turn in resignations. There are a total of about 1,480 medical professors at the Seoul National University Hospital and its three affiliated hospitals, most of whom concurrently work as doctors there.

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