Overnight Meeting Ends with Residents Deciding to Continue Strike (Update)

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jeong] The Korean Intern Resident Association (KIRA), which is on an indefinite strike opposing the government's medical policies such as expanding medical school quotas and establishing public medical schools, held an overnight meeting to decide whether to continue the strike and ultimately concluded to proceed with the strike.

According to the medical community on the 30th, KIRA held an emergency committee meeting where a vote on whether to continue the resident strike was conducted, but it was rejected as it did not reach a majority. However, after additional meetings, they decided to proceed with the indefinite strike.

A KIRA emergency committee official stated in the morning, "We held an overnight meeting from 10 p.m. the previous day until this morning," adding, "With the government having filed charges against residents for disobeying the work commencement order, the internal consensus was strong that collective action could not be stopped, and thus it was decided to continue the strike."

The day before, a consultative body composed of directors of national and private university hospitals and medical schools nationwide proposed to KIRA to temporarily suspend the strike and renegotiate policies with the government from scratch. The tentative agenda included forming a consultative body between the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and the Ministry of Health and Welfare to discuss policies such as expanding medical school quotas and establishing public medical schools from the beginning.

With KIRA rejecting the proposal and deciding to continue the indefinite strike, the confrontation between the medical community and the government has escalated to an extreme level.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.