February 19, 2025
SEOUL – Six in 10 medical residents who resigned from their hospitals a year ago to protest the Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s medical school enrollment quota hike have since become re-employed at medical institutions as non-specialists, data showed Tuesday.
According to Health Ministry data received by Rep. Kim Sun-min of the Rebuilding Korea Party, 5,176 of 9,222 medical residents (56.1 percent) who resigned or declined appointments at training hospitals since February last year have gotten jobs at other medical institutions as of last month.
Their resignations came after the government announced its plan to add 2,000 places to medical school admissions quotas on Feb. 6 last year. Two weeks later, medical residents turned in their resignations and ceased working at hospitals en masse. In June, the government withdrew its order prohibiting the acceptance of these resignations, leading hospitals to process doctors’ resignations from July — making it possible for junior doctors to get hired as general practitioners elsewhere.
In South Korea, a general practitioner refers to a doctor who has graduated from medical school and passed the national medical licensing exam but has not undergone residency training. To become a specialist, a general practitioner must complete an internship and residency in a specific field and pass the specialist exam.
By type of medical institution, 3,023 out of 5,176 medical residents (58.4 percent) are now working at private clinics. Of them, two-thirds have found jobs in the greater Seoul area, including 998 in Seoul, 827 in Gyeonggi Province and 205 in Incheon.
Only 88 doctors (1.7 percent) are now working at top-tier general hospitals — institutions with over 500 beds and more than 20 medical departments — whereas another 815 (15.7 percent) found positions at general hospitals and 763 (14.7 percent) at smaller regional clinics. Another 383 (7.4 percent) were re-employed at nursing hospitals and 58 (1.1 precent) were at traditional Korean medicine hospitals.
Meanwhile, 4,046 of 9,222 medical residents who have resigned remained outside the medical workforce.
Another government data also showed that such resignations and re-employment of medical residents have significantly impacted the country’s overall medical workforce.
According to statistics from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, as of the end of last year, the number of general practitioners working at medical institutions nationwide had surged by 76.9 percent to 10,684, up from 6,041 at the end of 2023, before the junior doctors resigned en masse.
The number of general practitioners at private clinics rose from 4,073 to 7,170 (up 76.0 percent), while those working at hospitals more than quadrupled from 204 to 842 over the past year.
In contrast, the number of interns at medical institutions nationwide plummeted by 96.4 percent compared to the end of 2023, while the number of medical residents dropped by 88.7 percent.
The number of specialists increased by 1.8 percent over the past year, but due to the ongoing resignations, the number of candidates passing the first stage of this year’s specialist exam has plunged to 18 percent of last year’s figure.