SENIOR doctors at dozens of hospitals in South Korea began submitting their resignations today in support of junior doctors who have been on a strike for five weeks, their leader said.

The junior doctors have been in dispute over the government’s push to sharply increase medical school admissions.

The senior doctors’ action will likely not cause an immediate worsening of hospital operation provision in South Korea because they have said they would continue to work even after submitting their resignations. 

But prospects for an early end to the medical impasse were also dim, as the doctors’ planned action came after President Yoon Suk Yeol called for talks while suggesting a possible softening of punitive steps against the striking junior doctors.

About 12,000 junior doctors have faced impending suspensions of their licences over their refusal to end their strikes, which have caused hundreds of cancelled surgeries and other treatments at their hospitals.

They oppose the government’s plan to increase the country’s medical school admission cap by two-thirds, saying schools can’t handle such a steep increase in students and that it would eventually hurt South Korea’s medical services. 

But officials say more doctors are urgently needed because South Korea has a rapidly ageing population and its doctor-to-population ratio is one of the lowest in the developed world.

In a meeting with ruling party leader Han Dong Hoon on Sunday, representatives of medical professors and doctors at some 40 university hospitals, where the junior doctors work while training, expressed support for the striking doctors, saying the government’s recruitment plan “would collapse our country’s medical system,” Kim Chang Soo, head of the emergency committee at those universities, said today.

Mr Kim described President Yoon’s overture as a positive step.