Kim Taek-woo, head of the emergency committee of the Korean Medical Association, the largest doctors' lobby group, speaks during a briefing at the KMA building in Yongsan, central Seoul, on Tuesday. (Yonhap)
A doctors' lobby group said Tuesday it was canceling a planned joint press conference with other doctors' groups and medical professors, amid signs of an apparent rift within the medical community over how to respond to the government's plan to increase the medical student quota.
The Korean Medical Association made the announcement, saying they need more time for negotiations with the trainee doctors who walked off their jobs seven weeks ago in protest against raising the medical school admissions by 2,000 starting next year. The current quota is 3,058.
"We still have some things to fine-tune, so holding a joint press conference this week is going to be difficult," Kim Sung-geun, public relations head of the KMA emergency committee, said in a briefing.
Earlier this week, the KMA had agreed with a few associations representing junior doctors, and medical schools and medical professors to have the press availability to announce their position in one voice.
But Park Dan, who's leading the emergency committee at the Korea Intern Resident Association (KIRA), said in a social media post that KIRA had never agreed to hold such a joint press conference.
The KMA's emergency committee appears to be at odds with Lim Hyun-taek, the newly appointed KMA president who has taken a hard approach toward the government.
On Tuesday, the presidential office said it has no plans to defer the planned increase of medical school admissions, dismissing earlier comments by Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo that reviewing a KMA proposal to defer the quota expansion by one year might be possible.
The presidential official reiterated that the government remains open to discussing an adjustment to the number 2,000 "if the medical community proposes a unified opinion based on scientific and rational grounds."
The KMA on Wednesday repeated that going back to square one on the quota hike is what the entire medical community wants.
"The decision on 2,000 is unreasonable and unfair, so we are saying that we should give enough time to discuss this from the start," Kim said. (Yonhap)
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