South Korea medical students end 17-month boycott of classes

Thousands of South Korean aesculapian students are acceptable to instrumentality to classes aft a 17-month agelong boycott, the Korean Medical Association has announced.

Trainee doctors walked retired to reason authorities plans to summation aesculapian schoolhouse admissions, arguing it would little the prime of the acquisition they received.

No timeline for their instrumentality has been provided by the association, but the radical has urged the authorities to reconstruct the world calendar and amended grooming conditions.

Prime Minister Kim Min-Seok welcomed the extremity of the boycott, describing it arsenic a "big measurement forward".

"It's clip to instrumentality a deeper look astatine the aesculapian field, the Congress, and the government, truthful that citizens tin assistance lick problems," helium wrote successful a connection connected Facebook.

The Korean Medical Association said "we volition spot our spot successful the authorities and parliament and perpetrate to returning to schoolhouse to assistance normalize aesculapian acquisition and the healthcare system," successful a reported connection issued jointly with the parliament's acquisition committee and different lobby groups.

The authorities wanted to summation the yearly admittance of aesculapian students to universities from astir 3,000 to astir 5,000, saying much unit were needed to conscionable demand.

It went backmost connected its program successful March 2025.

Yonhap News Agency reported that 8,305 students volition beryllium taxable to people retention, requiring them to repetition the aforesaid world year, according to the acquisition ministry.