TLDR: They have a cap of 3,000 medical students per year. Of course letting immigrants in to do anything but the dirtiest jobs is unthinkable. So with an aging population (especially in poorly-served rural areas) the number of doctors is kept artificially low to reduce competition. That's pretty insane to begin with, but it gets worse. Somehow there's a quota for the number of total medical students but no quotas for how many have to go into different fields, so most of them choose to become dermatologists. It turns out that in a skin-obsessed culture you can make a lot more money that way than by delivering babies in some village out in the mountains. (Also some of the "dermatology" clinics are just places where rich people go to get shot up with propofol. They're literally just drug dealers.)
So President Yun Seok-Yul tried to increase the quota to 5,000/year. The doctors went apeshit and went on strike. That was back in February and they still are refusing to back down. The public is starting to realize that doctors are a cabal who've got a monopoly on health care and intend to squeeze the most possible cash out of it. The doctors are also pissed now that nurses are being allowed to take over some duties that used to be theirs. Well maybe show up and do the work if you don't want someone else to?
It's a good thing doctors in other countries aren't exactly the same...
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SK seems so shit lol let Kim take it over
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USA has the same issue
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There's so much fighting over how medical insurance should work, nobody ever stops and asks why the frick we're paying these people so much when most of them have their employees do all the work for them.
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Snapshots:
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20241030050618:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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