SEOUL, South Korea — Thousands of senior physicians rallied in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on Sunday to reveal their assistance for junior physicians who haveactually been on strike for almost 2 weeks over a federalgovernment strategy to dramatically boost the number of medical school admissions.
The rally came as the federalgovernment stated it would start to take actions Monday to suspend the physicians’ licenses of almost 9,000 medical interns and citizens for defying federalgovernment orders to end their walkouts, which haveactually interferedwith healthcarefacility operations.
“The federalgovernment’s unreasonable medical policy has activated tremendous resistance by student physicians and medical trainees, and we physicians have endupbeing one,” Park Sung-min, a senior member of the Korea Medical Association, stated in a speech at the rally. “I’m asking the federalgovernment: Please, stop the risks and suppression now.”
Protesters shouted mottos, sang and held placards slamming the federalgovernment’s strategy. There were were no reports of violence.
As of Thursday night, 8,945 of the nation’s 13,000 medical interns and homeowners were verified to have left their worksites, according to the Health Ministry. The federalgovernment had stated they would face minimum three-month license suspensions and indictments by districtattorneys if they didn’t return by Feb.29
The striking medicalprofessionals are a portion of So