Korean Medical Association to hold debate at National Assembly on 10th...Ministry of Education recommends ”No increase in medical school enrollment next year”

The Korean Medical Association announced on the 6th that it will hold a “Policy Dialogue for Normalizing the Medical Field” discussion meeting at 10 a.m. on the 10th at the National Assembly Building, with the theme of improving the training environment and treatment of medical residents.
The forum was organized with the aim of incorporating the voices of medical residents who are in a poor training environment into policy and quickly resolving the long-running medical crisis.
Park Dan (vice president of the Korean Medical Association), who serves as emergency response committee chairman for the Daejeon Resident Council, will be in charge of proposing the topic, and the residents who resigned will also be speaking directly.
The Korean Medical Association said, "Since the medical specialist association, which is the interested party, is directly participating in the discussion meeting, the opinions of the medical community, the government, and the National Assembly are being expressed.
"I hope that this will be well coordinated and become the basis for overcoming the medical crisis," he said. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education (equivalent to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan) will hold a meeting with university presidents and deans of medical schools as early as tomorrow.
They plan to meet with the Ministry of Health and Welfare (equivalent to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare) and the Medical Human Resources Supply and Demand Estimation Committee to recommend that "the number of additional medical school students for the 2026 academic year be set at zero."
There is a need to increase the number of medical students, but the problem of medical students not returning home for two years in protest against the government's policy must first be resolved before the training of medical personnel can be promoted.
This is because they have decided that they will be able to proceed with the expansion. Accordingly, they are planning to keep the enrollment capacity for the 2026 academic year the same as before the expansion (3,058 students). Initially, the university president and others had planned to set the enrollment capacity for the Faculty of Medicine for the 2026 academic year as
I was opposed to the proposal to increase the number of students to 3,058, which is an increase of 0 students. However, after the start of classes, a trend will develop in which not only students enrolling in 2024 but also students enrolling in 2025 will take leave of absence.
The government also initially made it clear that it would only be able to change its policy on increasing the number of medical school students if it could provide scientific evidence.
However, it was revealed that there is some concern within the government about setting a medical school enrollment quota of 3,058 for the 2026 academic year.
This is because they believe that there will be ample time to discuss the medical school enrollment quota for next year. Some are voicing their opinions, saying that the government should consider whether to accept the university president's request for a 3,058-student enrollment quota for the 2026 academic year before accepting the request.
There are also voices saying that it should be assumed that students will return to school in March.