SOUTH KOREA’S government hit out at senior doctors at a major hospital today for threatening to resign in support of the walkouts by thousands of medical interns and residents that have disrupted hospital operations.

About 12,000 junior doctors in South Korea have been off the job for a month to protest against a government plan to sharply increase medical school admissions. 

Officials say the plan is meant to add more doctors to deal with the country's rapidly ageing society, but doctors say universities can’t handle an abrupt, steep increase in the number of students.

The government began steps a week ago to suspend the licences of the striking doctors, after they missed a government-set February 29 deadline for their return.

But now senior doctors at the Seoul National University Hospital decided on Monday to resign en masse if the government does not resolve the dispute by early next week. 

“If the government doesn’t take steps toward sincere, reasonable measures to resolve the issue, we decided to submit resignations, starting from March 18,” Bang Jae Seung, leader of the Seoul hospital’s emergency committee, told reporters.

Vice-Health Minister Park Min Soo called the Seoul National University Hospital doctors’ decision “very regrettable.”

He said: “The people would find it difficult to understand another collective resignation that would put the lives of patients at risk.”