Korean Doctors to Launch Nationwide Strike This Week

This strike has to do with how the Moon administration plans to increase the quota of students allowed into medical school. The government believes this will allow more doctors to staff rural areas. The Korean Medical Association believes the problem is not the number of doctors, but the fact many of them flock to the Seoul area because of better hospitals and quality of life concerns. If the hospitals and quality of life improved in rural areas the doctors would work there:

Tens of thousands of doctors will go on a full-scale strike as scheduled this week in protest of the government’s medical workforce reform plan and proceed with a rally in a non-contact manner amid spiking virus cases. 

Doctors, including interns and resident doctors at general hospitals and practitioners at neighborhood clinics, plan to begin a three-day nationwide strike starting Wednesday to protest the government’s move to increase the number of medical students, according to the Korean Medical Association (KMA), which has some 130,000 members.

The collective action comes as thousands of trainee doctors have already been staging an indefinite strike since late last week, calling for the government to scrap the plan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Korean Medical Association says that doctors supporting COVID-19 care will still report for duty.