A lawsuit seeking to cancel a Ministry of National Defense directive that barred junior doctors who resigned in protest at the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's "medical school quota increase" from enlisting in the military when they wished was rejected by a court. The reason was that the resigned junior doctors lacked standing to sue.
The Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 1 (Presiding Judge Yang Sang-yoon) on Jul. 10 dismissed a suit filed by six medical officer candidates, including a person surnamed Kim, seeking to overturn the classification decision as "not selected for active duty" against the Minister of the Ministry of National Defense.
Kim and the others worked as junior doctors at training hospitals. The Ministry of Health and Welfare in Feb. 2024 announced a policy to increase the medical school quota by 2,000 from the previous 3,058. When junior doctors, including interns and residents, protested and submitted resignation letters to their training hospitals, the ministry issued an "order prohibiting acceptance of mass resignation letters from junior doctors." The ministry withdrew this order in June the same year, and each training hospital accepted the resignation letters submitted by the junior doctors.
The Ministry of National Defense had placed men who had not yet completed military service and became junior doctors after graduating from medical school into the medical officer candidate pool and deferred their enlistment. Once they completed training, about 1,000 were enlisted each year to serve their military duty as military doctors or public health doctors. They cannot serve as ordinary enlisted soldiers.
But in 2024, the mass resignations by junior doctors suddenly more than tripled the number of enlistment candidates, creating a problem. There were not enough positions to assign them as military doctors or public health doctors. The Ministry of National Defense revised its directive in February last year to classify resigned junior doctors exceeding the annual intake capacity as "not selected for active duty for the year," requiring them to enlist later.
During the trial, the Ministry of National Defense argued that the classification as not selected for active duty does not constitute a "disposition, etc." under the Administrative Litigation Act subject to an administrative suit, making the filing improper. It also said that although Kim and the others had resigned as junior doctors when they filed the suit, they later all returned to their training hospitals and are working as junior doctors, so even if the classification as not selected for active duty were canceled, there would be no benefit.
The bench said, "Determining the scope of those subject to conscription is directly tied to national security and is a matter that must be set teleologically to maintain 'optimal combat power' while responding flexibly to rapidly changing domestic and international conditions," adding, "By its nature, this is an area in which the legislative formation power of lawmakers and others must be recognized as very broad."
It went on, "Even if the classification notice in this case is viewed as an act of refusing to select the plaintiffs as active-duty officers in the medical field, it cannot be seen that the plaintiffs have a right to apply to demand immediate selection by the Ministry of National Defense as active-duty officers in the medical field for the year without regard to the military's active-duty personnel needs."
Meanwhile, the Korean Medical Association Organization in April last year filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court, saying that the Ministry of National Defense directive allowing some of the candidates for selection as medical officers to be classified as "not selected for active duty for the year" infringed on the basic rights of junior doctors.