The government will also temporarily raise the fees doctors receive from health insurance around a national holiday period as the strike increases strains on the medical system.
Here’s a longer article going into detail why the residents are so upset.
Basically, there are a lot of problems with the South Korean healthcare system, leading to unsafe public health situations. Instead of actually trying to fix any of the problems, the government decided to significantly increase the number of residents each year (throw more people at the problems), criminally prosecute them for mistakes, and also tell them it might be illegal to quit, so they’ll just take their whole medical license away. Like 90% quit and said they’re not coming back. There was a suggestion that the government, instead of completely revoking resigning residents’ medical licenses, may remove their ability to work in hospitals ever again, but allow them to work in rural clinics because they’re already so understaffed and no one wants to live in the middle of nowhere for shit pay… unless the only other option is to find a new field of work and waste all those years of med school.
There are a lot of problems in the Korean medical system. Here’s a journal report discussing a few of the key points: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00766-9/fulltext
Here’s a longer article going into detail why the residents are so upset.
Basically, there are a lot of problems with the South Korean healthcare system, leading to unsafe public health situations. Instead of actually trying to fix any of the problems, the government decided to significantly increase the number of residents each year (throw more people at the problems), criminally prosecute them for mistakes, and also tell them it might be illegal to quit, so they’ll just take their whole medical license away. Like 90% quit and said they’re not coming back. There was a suggestion that the government, instead of completely revoking resigning residents’ medical licenses, may remove their ability to work in hospitals ever again, but allow them to work in rural clinics because they’re already so understaffed and no one wants to live in the middle of nowhere for shit pay… unless the only other option is to find a new field of work and waste all those years of med school.
*Edited to add more context