SEOUL, Dec. 11 (Korea Bizwire) – Cafes near South Korea’s National Assembly have become centers of an impromptu “pay it forward” initiative, where supporters nationwide and abroad are purchasing refreshments in advance for protesters calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment. “A young voice called asking about our cheapest rice cakes, saying they wanted to pay [...]
SEOUL, Dec. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — A senior presidential official said Tuesday that a now-disbanded consultative body on a prolonged walkout by trainee doctors could be reopened, but urged relevant parties to make more efforts to resolve the medical impasse. Jang Sang-yoon, senior presidential secretary for social policy, made the remark during a radio interview [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul Metro, the operator of subway lines 1-8, said Friday that 27 trains were delayed by more than 20 minutes on the previous day, the second day of a slowdown strike by its unionized workers. With 3,189 subway trains in operation Thursday, their on-time rate stood at 99.1 percent, [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — Back-to-back protests by railway and subway workers disrupted subway services in the capital area on Wednesday, with commuters complaining of delays during the morning rush hour. The Korean Railway Workers’ Union’s work-to-rule protest continued for the third day, causing eight trains on subway lines 1, 3 and 4 and [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — A consultative body involving the ruling People Power Party (PPP), the government and doctors’ groups was launched on Monday to seek to resolve a prolonged walkout by trainee doctors, with the aim of producing “meaningful” results by late December, a PPP lawmaker said. Thousands of trainee doctors have left [...]
SEJONG, Oct. 24 (Korea Bizwire) – The health ministry said Thursday it has selected eight institutions to launch a program in which general hospitals will focus more on treating critical patients while referring those with mild symptoms to local hospitals. Through the program, the government aims to have critically ill cases take up 70 percent [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – As tensions between the medical community and the government continue to simmer, an increasing number of South Korean doctors are exploring opportunities abroad, signaling a potential brain drain in the nation’s healthcare sector. On October 19, a healthcare consulting company held an information session for Tokushukai Group, Japan’s largest medical [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Thursday that the government is ready for talks with doctors if they propose a debate on medical reform. Cho made the remarks after a debate between the government and medical professors at Seoul National University (SNU) last week, focusing on the medical reform aimed [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Korea Bizwire) – Seven months after the South Korean government launched a pilot program to clarify nurses’ responsibilities, about 30% of nurses still report feeling anxious due to ambiguous job scopes, according to a recent survey. Representative Kang Sun-woo of the Democratic Party of Korea revealed these findings on October 9, based on [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Korea Bizwire) – Public medical institutions in South Korea are grappling with an increasingly severe shortage of doctors, a chronic issue that has pushed salaries to unprecedented levels. In a striking example last year, a public medical center in South Jeolla Province hired an orthopedic surgeon for an annual salary of 620 million [...]