Massive Opposition Floods Ministry of Health's Legislative Notice on Introducing Foreign-Licensed Doctors

Over 1,000 Opposed Out of 1,100 Opinions
First Time Recent Legislative Notice Shows One-Sided Opinion Concentration

A flood of opposition votes poured in against the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s legislative notice to temporarily introduce foreign licensed doctors to fill the medical gap caused by the collective resignation of residents.

As of 1:30 PM on the 12th, a total of 1,100 opinions were posted on the legislative notice. Among them, 1,008 were opposed, accounting for 91.6%, while only 15 were in favor. The remaining 77 were other opinions.

On the morning of the 10th, when medical school professors nationwide decided to go on strike, patients and guardians were waiting for their turn at a large hospital in Seoul. Photo by Younghan Heo younghan@

Since last year until now, among about 340 legislative and administrative notices by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, there have been only four cases with more than 1,000 opinions for or against, including the introduction of foreign doctors. The others were administrative notices related to the Mind Investment Support Project, Disability Degree Assessment Criteria, and Disability Degree Review Regulations, where opinions were evenly split, unlike this case where opinions were heavily one-sided.

Earlier, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced on the 8th that it would give a legislative notice on partial amendments to the Enforcement Rules of the Medical Service Act until the 20th of this month. If this law is enforced, people with foreign medical licenses will be able to perform medical acts such as treatment and surgery in Korea during the current 'severe' stage of the health and medical disaster alert.

Opponents of this legislative notice to introduce foreign doctors posted comments such as "It feels like they are continuing reckless moves to cover up mistakes," "I seriously worry whether this is a genuine policy for the people," and "We cannot entrust lives to foreign doctors who are unverified and do not even speak the language." A minority of supporters expressed opinions like "Importing doctors who failed the exam is fake news propaganda," "I support it on the condition of Korean language proficiency, medical personnel screening, and prescribed education," and "It is a temporary allowance during the gap caused by the strike." There were also comments suggesting the use of Korean medicine doctors, saying, "If a policy is made allowing Korean medicine doctors to train in general hospitals, the shortage of doctors can also be solved."

The government’s position is to deploy foreign doctors only under limited conditions after thoroughly verifying their competence. On the 10th, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo chaired the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters meeting and said, "Under no circumstances will doctors whose skills have not been verified treat our citizens, and we will establish thorough safety measures."

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