Forty medical schools nationwide have requested to enroll an additional 3,401 students for the 2025 academic year, according to government officials on Tuesday.

If the government accepts such requests, the medical school enrollment quota will more than double the current 3,058.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare released the medical school admission application results at a regular briefing of the Central Disaster Safety Countermeasures Center for Collective Action of Doctors. The ministry conducted the demand survey of 40 medical schools from Feb. 22 to 24.

The results of the demand survey exceeded the maximum of medical school enrollment quotas in the demand survey conducted last November. At the time, medical schools proposed a minimum of 2,551 and a maximum of 2,847 more students for the 2025 academic year.

By region, 13 medical schools in the Seoul metro region requested 930 more students. Eight schools in Seoul requested 365 and, five in Gyeonggi Province, and Incheon requested 565, while 27 medical schools outside of the greater Seoul area requested 2,471 more students.

The government plans to quickly finalize the quota allocation process by comprehensively considering each university's demand and educational capacity, the need for regional and essential medical support, and the educational capacity of small medical schools.

Besides, it will activate a separate committee to allocate medical school students.

"We have also received various plans from universities on how they plan to operate medical schools in the future,” said Shim Min-cheol, a human resources policy planner at the Ministry of Education. “We will review the documents and discuss how to allocate students practically with the Ministry of Health and Welfare."

Shim added that the government would form a separate committee to allocate students.

“The Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Education, and the medical community and experts will gather to compare the (allocation) criteria and the submissions from each university and make a final decision,” he said.

Officials interpreted the provincial medical schools' high application rates as expressing their strong wishes to strengthen regional healthcare services.

"The results of the university application reaffirmed that the demand for immediate increase in the number of medical students that can be increased in 2025 under the premise of securing medical quality, including compliance with evaluation and accreditation standards, exceeds 2,000 as proposed by the government," Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Park Min-soo said. "Provincial medical schools’ demand accounted for 72 percent of the total, indicating their desire to strengthen regional essential healthcare."