Ministry of Health and Welfare to Gather Opinions Until the 19th...
First-Year Resident Written Exam Exempted
No Military Service Special Measures for Residents Returning Through February Additional Recruitment
The government has confirmed special measures for residents returning to training in the first half of this year, including exemption from training gaps and the first-year resident written exam. Those subject to military enlistment will be allowed to enlist as military officers after completing their training.
On the 11th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that it will collect opinions on the 'Standards for Applying Special Training Measures for Residents' until the 19th.
Earlier, when recruiting residents for training in the first half of this year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare decided to grant special training measures to encourage the return of residents who collectively resigned last February in opposition to the increase in medical school admissions. Based on the 'Regulations on Specialist Training and Qualification Recognition' and the 'Enforcement Rules of Training Regulations,' residents who resigned or declined appointment last year and apply in the recruitment process in January-February 2025 will be allowed to return to training starting in March.
Accordingly, the current upper-year residents (2nd to 4th year) who resigned within one year were previously prohibited from applying to the same hospital and the same department. This regulation has been changed so that even if the resignation occurred within one year as of March 1, 2025, the start date of training in the first half of 2025, they can return to the department of the medical institution where they were training before resignation.
The training gap and the first-year resident written exam from last February will be exempted. According to the original regulations, residents who left their workplace in February 2024 would have resigned without completing the 2023 training course (March 1, 2023 ? February 29, 2024) and would have to restart the previous year’s training upon returning. However, this exemption applies only to those returning this time.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare also decided to recognize as additional quota any cases where residents who resigned and passed the recruitment in the first half of this year exceed the vacancy limits within the assigned quota of each training hospital during the recruitment process.
The special measures also include provisions to maximize the possibility for military officer candidates who return through the first-year resident first recruitment in December 2024, the resigned resident recruitment in January 2025, and the first-year resident second recruitment in January 2025, to enlist as military officers after completing training. Interns participating in the training process from March 2025 through this recruitment process can be incorporated as military officer candidates by the Military Manpower Administration upon notification from the training institution.
Even if training cannot be completed by age 33, residents can return to training and continue until before turning 33, after which they must fulfill military service and then complete the remaining training. In principle, military officer candidates who resign from the training institution or cannot complete training by age 33 must enlist immediately.
However, the principle of not applying military service special measures to residents returning through the additional recruitment held from February 10 to 28 remains unchanged. The government explained that since classification of military doctors and public health doctors and confirmation of enlistment candidates usually occur in January, it is not possible to apply special measures in February due to timing.
A Ministry of Health and Welfare official stated, "We have repeatedly clarified that there will be no enlistment special measures during the additional resident recruitment in February, so no additional special measures will be provided. This opinion collection is merely a procedure to formalize the already announced content, and the special measures will not change after collecting opinions."
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