A South Korean court dismissed requests submitted by leaders of the country’s biggest doctor’s associations to stop the government’s suspension of their medical licenses.
The government’s plan to suspend the leader’s licenses is due to the mass resignation and ongoing strike by junior doctors that began in mid-February over the government’s plan to increase the number of medical school applicants.
Kim Take-woo and Park Myung-ha filed the requests in response to the Health Ministry’s decision to suspend the licenses of two leaders of the Korea Medical Association for three months. Both individuals filed separate requests with the Seoul Administrative Court to halt the suspensions, which would begin on April 15th.
However, the courts dismissed both requests, saying that the “halting the suspension could compromise the effectiveness of the Health Ministry’s punitive action taken against disobedience of back-to-work order and hinder the public’s trust in such punitive actions.” They also said that the “possibility of the collective walkout by doctors spreading further and prolonging a medical vacuum.”
