SEOUL: South Korea said Thursday it was seeking its first talks with striking junior doctors, warning them to return to hospitals ahead of a looming deadline or risk legal action over work stoppages that have plunged hospitals into chaos.
Nearly 10,000 junior doctors — about 80 percent of the trainee workforce — handed in their notice and walked off the job last week to protest government plans to sharply increase medical school admissions to cope with shortages and an aging society.
Doctors say the plan would hurt the quality of service, and the Korean Medical Association (KMA) has slammed the government’s “intimidation tactics.”
Under South Korean law, doctors are prohibited from striking, and the government has threatened to arrest and suspend the medical licenses of medics who do not return to work by Thursday.
Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said he had contacted doctors involved in the strike seeking talks and hoped to meet them later Thursday, adding he was unsure “how many people will attend.”
Doctors had begun trickling back to work in hospitals, Park said. “We have confirmed a downgrade in the walkouts for two days in a row,” he told a press briefing.
But Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong told local media on Thursday that “a full-scale return has not yet materialized.”
“As today is the last day (to) return, I implore them to do so for the patients,” he said, adding medics who returned to work before the deadline expired would not be punished.
Cho said the government was committed to its reform plan, which would increase medical school admissions by 65 percent, citing shortages of health professionals and a looming demographic crisis.
The KMA has not commented on possible talks, but a social media account run by young doctors shared a screenshot of a text message from the government and said: “You must be joking.”
Analysts say the government’s hard-line stance may play well for them ahead of legislative elections set for April 10.
“If the government were to back down now, they would perceive it as a major setback ahead of the upcoming general elections,” Kim Jae-heon, the secretary general of an NGO advocating free medical care, said.
But doctors “believe that stepping back at this point would result in their own disadvantage. It seems the current standoff will continue for a while.”
Proponents of the reform say doctors are mainly concerned the changes could erode their salaries and social status. The government says South Korea has one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios among developed countries.
Polling shows up to 75 percent of the public support the reforms, and President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has taken a hard line on the striking doctors, has seen his approval ratings tick up.
Kim Sung-ju, head of the Korean Cancer Patients Rights Council, said that patients’ lives were being held “hostage.”
“If the entire system comes to a halt simply because (junior doctors) have left, it truly highlights the shortage of doctors,” he said.
“It is astonishing that they are... using patients’ lives as leverage to further their own interests.”
The mass work stoppage has resulted in cancelations and postponements of surgeries for cancer patients and C-sections for pregnant women, with the government raising its public health alert to the highest level.
Kim Tae-hyeon, the head of the Korean ALS Association, said the striking doctors were “worse than organized criminals.”
“In hospice wards and intensive care units, (patients) are struggling to stay alive,” he added.
South Korea seeks talks with striking medics as return to work deadline looms
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South Korea seeks talks with striking medics as return to work deadline looms
- Nearly 10,000 junior doctors – about 80 percent of the trainee workforce – handed in their notice and walked off the job last week
Villagers massacred in South Sudan food aid trap
- Civilians killed after being lured from homes with promise of aid, witnesses say
NAIROBI: More than a dozen civilians were killed after being lured from their homes by fighters allied to South Sudan’s government under the pretense of being registered for humanitarian food aid, according to two people who survived the attack.
The killings took place on Saturday morning in the village of Pankor, in Ayod county, in the conflict-hit Jonglei state, about 400km north of the capital, Juba.
Women and children were among the victims.
HIGHLIGHTS
• The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured. • Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
Several dozen fighters arrived in pickup trucks and announced over a loudspeaker that they had come to register residents for food assistance, said the two survivors.
“They gathered them in a luak,” said one witness, referring to a traditional mud hut used to house cattle.
“People were thinking they would get aid or some help.”
The fighters then bound the hands of several men and opened fire on the group.
The two survivors said that 22 people were killed and several more were injured.
The government-appointed county commissioner said 16 people were killed.
Photos showed bodies of women and young men, some with their hands bound behind their backs, who appear to have been shot at close range.
The images, which were shared with AP by an opposition representative, are too graphic to publish.
Makuach Muot, 34, traveled to Pankor on Sunday for the funerals of eight relatives.
Most of the village’s residents had fled fighting months earlier, he said, leaving behind mainly elderly people and young children.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang could not be reached for comment.
James Chuol Jiek, the government-appointed county commissioner of Ayod, confirmed that more than a dozen people, mostly women and children, had been killed in the attack.
He said the gunmen belonged to the Agwelek militia, a force drawn from the Shilluk ethnic group that has not been fully integrated into the national army but that has been deeply involved in recent military operations.
Jiek said the fighters had left their barracks overnight without their commander’s knowledge.
He said they told him the killings were revenge for attacks by a Nuer militia on Shilluk villages in 2022, during which hundreds of civilians were killed or abducted.
The government county commissioner condemned the killings and said that several officers had been arrested and that the army had disarmed 150 fighters from the battalion involved.
He disputed that people had been lured out for an aid registration. “This is an opposition lie,” he said.
In January, Agwelek militia commander Lt. Gen. Johnson Olony was filmed ordering his forces to kill civilians during military operations in Jonglei state. “Spare no lives,” he said.
“When we arrive there, don’t spare an elderly, don’t spare a chicken, don’t spare a house or anything.”
His remarks drew widespread rebuke from the UN and others. Olony has since apologized.
Armed clashes, aerial bombardments, and years of extreme flooding have left more than half of Ayod county’s population facing severe food insecurity.
Ayod county lies in northern Jonglei state, an opposition stronghold and a flashpoint in renewed fighting that the UN estimates displaced 280,000people since December.
Aid groups have warned that access restrictions to opposition-held parts of the state were endangering civilian lives.
Residents of northern Jonglei are overwhelmingly from the Nuer ethnic group of suspended vice president and opposition leader Riek Machar.
Opposition officials have repeatedly called the government’s actions in Nuer areas of the country “genocidal.”
Reath Tang Muoch, a senior official in the SPLM-IO, called Olony’s remarks “an early indicator of genocidal intent.”
