The recruitment of residents for the second half of the year begins on the 11th at training hospitals nationwide. While it is expected that many of the residents who collectively resigned in February of last year in opposition to the increase in medical school enrollment will return, there are concerns that the disparity between the metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas, as well as between essential and non-essential subjects, may lead to intensified clustering.
According to the government and the medical community on the 10th, national training hospitals will finalize and post recruitment announcements by the 11th and will select interns and residents by the 29th of this month, according to their own schedules. The Ministry of Health and Welfare's Evaluation Committee for Training Environments has received applications from hospitals and announced the recruitment numbers: 3,006 interns, 3,207 first-year residents, and 7,285 senior residents from the second to fourth years, totaling 13,498.
In particular, when a resident who resigned returns to the hospital and department where they originally worked, even if the number exceeds capacity, it will be accepted according to procedure as an after-the-fact admission of the resident count. The government plans to take steps to ensure that residents awaiting enlistment can complete training before joining the military.
The government believes that many residents will return as measures are put in place to ensure the continuity of the training process and consensus builds around the futility of further struggles. However, the scale of return may vary by region and subject.
Currently, a total of 2,532 residents are in training nationwide, with 1,707 (67.4%) working in metropolitan hospitals and 825 (32.6%) in non-metropolitan hospitals. The proportion of residents in the metropolitan area, which was 64% at the end of last year, has actually increased amid the conflict with the medical community. The return rate of residents in the metropolitan area was also higher during the additional recruitment process in the first half of the year.
Residents who resumed training through additional recruitment in June have shown a distinct tendency to flock to popular specialties such as radiology, orthopedics, urology, and plastic surgery rather than essential subjects like internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics.
According to materials on the status of resident returns in 2025 received from the Ministry of Health and Welfare by lawmaker Kim Sun-min of the Rebuilding Korea Party, the number of residents, which was 1,672 in March, increased by 51.4% to 2,532 in June within three months. Notably, radiology accounted for 16.9% of the total increase in residents, followed by orthopedics (12.9%), urology (11.8%), and plastic surgery (10.5%). In contrast, the increase rates for essential subjects such as internal medicine (5.0%), surgery (2.1%), obstetrics and gynecology (3.3%), pediatrics (1.0%), and emergency medicine (3.5%) were less than 5%.
Meanwhile, among the 11,810 residents who resigned or gave up their appointments as of June, 67.8% (8,110) are currently working at other medical institutions. The reemployment rate at clinics is the highest at 60.9%, followed by hospitals (23.7%), general hospitals (13.2%), and advanced general hospitals (2.2%).