There are a lot of problems in the Korean medical system. Here’s a journal report discussing a few of the key points: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00766-9/fulltext
Here’s a longer article going into detail why the residents are so upset.
Basically, there are a lot of problems with the South Korean healthcare system, leading to unsafe public health situations. Instead of actually trying to fix any of the problems, the government decided to significantly increase the number of residents each year (throw more people at the problems), criminally prosecute them for mistakes, and also tell them it might be illegal to quit, so they’ll just take their whole medical license away. Like 90% quit and said they’re not coming back. There was a suggestion that the government, instead of completely revoking resigning residents’ medical licenses, may remove their ability to work in hospitals ever again, but allow them to work in rural clinics because they’re already so understaffed and no one wants to live in the middle of nowhere for shit pay… unless the only other option is to find a new field of work and waste all those years of med school.
*Edited to add more context
Doctors wrote these articles to try to justify the strikes beyond the real reason.
What triggered the strikes were the opening of more positions in healthcare thus possibly effecting doctors’ bottom lines.
Edit: I’m also having trouble finding any sources that say “like 90%” of residents quit.
From one of the cited articles in the study:
Despite the government’s continued conciliation, the return of majors is still a long way off. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, only 879 (8.4%) of the 10,509 residents of 211 training hospitals actually went to work as of the 30th of last month. Based on 100 training hospitals, only 714 out of 9,992 people (7.1%) are working. “The Ministry of Health and Welfare recently sent an official letter to the heads of training hospitals across the country to meet with doctors to confirm their intention to return to the hospital and their future career,” said Jeon, a controller. “If you look at the institutions that submitted related data, the response rate for returning majors is less than 10 percent.”
