hankyoreh

A person rests in the waiting room outside an emergency room at a major hospital in Seoul on June 6, 2024. (Yonhap)

As Korea’s health care settings have become increasingly paralyzed by a protracted conflict over plans to increase the nationwide medical college admission cap, even members of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) are now calling on President Yoon Suk-yeol to take action to resolve the issue.

PPP lawmaker Ahn Cheol-soo, himself a physician, said Sunday that the administration “needs to resolve issues of both literal survival and livelihoods for the public.”

“President Yoon needs to show resolution in fixing the conflict between the medical community and government surrounding health care system issues that relate directly to survival,” he urged.

In a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh that day, Ahn said, “To resolve these problems, I’ve mediated meetings between the presidential office and Ministry of Health and Welfare officials and medical college faculty members, but there’s only so much that can be done when they don’t have the ability to change the [admission cap] number.”

“The only one with the power to change the number is the president,” he added.

Ahn also said, “If things keep up the way they are, a world-class health care system that has been built over decades will come crashing down completely.”

“I want to ask the administration what it intends to do about this, what kind of measures it has,” he continued.

Medical staff walk through the hall of a university-affiliated hospital in Seoul. (Yonhap)

He added, “He should formulate a plan that involves reaching an agreement on the admission cap increase but deferring it for one year and creating a committee for public discussion.”

On Saturday, former lawmaker Yoo Seong-min said, “The most urgent matter is the collapse of health care. Emergency health care, which is an essential part that the administration said it would be promoting, is now crashing quickly.”

“President Yoon needs to fix his own mess,” he urged.

Yoo’s comments came in a post on Facebook that day in which he said that the administration’s “diagnosis of the problem and prescriptions to fix it were both wrong” when it came to its policy of upping the medical school admission cap. “The president made an impassioned argument for the need for a 2,000-person increase [in the medical school admission cap] on April 1, just before the general election, but has nothing to say now that things have reached this point,” he wrote.

“If this issue is allowed to go on the way it has been without a resolution all because of a single person’s unwillingness to budge, the catastrophe that will ensue will be painful and the public will hold the president to account for it,” the former lawmaker went on. 

A day earlier, Kim Chong-in, a former interim leader of the PPP, took direct aim at Yoon, saying, “A lot of unintended consequences arise when a person insists on something they are ignorant about.”

In an appearance on CBS Radio on Thursday, Kim recounted his experience of taking a stumble early in the morning and visiting 22 emergency rooms for treatment, only to be turned away. 

“If the health care crisis caused by the medical school admission cap issue ends up bringing down [Korea’s health care system], I think it will be hard for the administration to keep going,” he assessed. 

By Son Hyun-soo, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]