S. Korea seeks talks with striking doctors

SEOUL — South Korea said on Thursday it was seeking 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, or 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 the deadline.

Second Vice-Health Minister Park Min-soo said he had contacted doctors involved in the strike and hoped to meet them later on Thursday.

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 news conference. But Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said on Thursday that "a full-scale return has not yet materialized".

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.

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, told Agence France-Presse.

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."

Agencies Via Xinhua