[The Editors' Verdict] Medical Education Disruption Must Be Stopped by the Medical Community

The recent stance of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), stating that they “respect each medical student’s individual judgment,” becomes more perplexing the more one reflects on it. They say, “We want to tell the students to return to their places as the KMA will take responsibility and resolve the issue,” but they cannot do so because the core problems of the situation remain unresolved. This is difficult to interpret as anything other than the KMA viewing medical students as pawns in a power struggle.

What is even more problematic is that the KMA’s attitude could act as a signal that partially encourages the extreme faction of medical students, whose excessive obstruction of return has escalated to the point of police investigations.

Distributing so-called ‘blacklists’ containing the names of returning medical students and demanding unregistered real-name verification on online communities, while threatening to disclose the list if they do not comply, is violent and could easily be considered criminal by any reasonable person.

As a result, the criticism that the KMA is inciting such deviations by a faction within the medical student group is quite understandable. Regardless of how the medical student non-return situation unfolds, the leadership of the KMA, which represents the medical community, and the justifications it has promoted so far, must be seen as significantly damaged. Although these are outstanding talents, it is inappropriate and unhelpful for ‘university students’ who have just begun their formal education to be caught up in the current nationwide turmoil.

The worst-case scenario regarding the medical-government conflict is an irresponsible standoff between the two. The government’s gesture of freezing the medical school quota for the 2026 academic year on the premise that all medical students return can be seen as a move forward, regardless of whether the medical community is satisfied with it. However, the KMA appears to be ignoring this and refuses to abandon the more intense and futile trench warfare.

The medical students, who are the future leaders of healthcare that the KMA claims to cherish and worry about so much, are unwittingly being forced into a precarious and one-sided trench battle. It is not normal that we must pay attention to the commonsense statement that “If no one plans to help medical students in crisis, the responsible thing for adults is to tell these promising students to stop and go back” (Lee Dong-wook, President of the Gyeonggi-do Medical Association).

It is somewhat fortunate that voices within the KMA have called for requesting the government and universities to extend the deadline for medical student expulsion. This could create even a small space for consultation between the medical community and the government to manage the confusion. Although it is still difficult to gauge due to strong pressure for a hardline struggle led by the executive, any ‘crack’ that refreshes the internal atmosphere is certainly positive.

The KMA has indicated that if medical student expulsion becomes a reality, it will fight using all possible means. This attitude of lurking in the trenches, merely glaring and then rising up only after a disaster occurs, is extremely precarious. The priority should be to exert all efforts to prevent such a disaster from happening and to restore the medical students to their rightful place; debating the details comes afterward.

Even if the students return, there remains the possibility of educational disruption due to re-leaves of absence or class boycotts. The KMA must actively engage in intense discussions to reset priorities and ensure that the educational environment on campus is no longer distorted.