Large hospitals have been paralyzed due to the government's unilateral push to increase the medical school enrollment quota for a month now.

In other words, for over a month, specialists and professors have been working around the clock to fill the healthcare void left by the departure of interns, residents, and full-time fellows.

Watching in real-time how a large hospital maintained with a low-cost workforce instantly loses its function, all Koreans must have realized that our healthcare system has been nothing more than a house of cards.

The government may be relieved to see large hospitals barely keeping their operations by pouring the blood and sweat of specialists and faculty into them. However, it is gravely overlooking something.

Large hospitals are not just for treating severe and emergency patients. They are also important for training future medical talents and researching medical advancement.

Korea’s ability to conduct clinical trials, the result of which the government proudly announces every year and touts as the most important infrastructure for the nation's future growth engine, has also become possible thanks to large hospitals playing their role as research institutions.

What about now, however? Large hospitals have completely stopped teaching and researching while focusing on patient care. How can specialists and professors fulfill their roles as researchers in this situation?

This reporter recently met with the director of a clinical trial center at a major hospital to hear about the reality. It was a grim one, indeed. In the past few weeks, with no new data to update, let alone enroll patients, the institution's research staff has remained idle, and researchers have long since stopped communicating with one another.

Given that patient enrollment in global clinical research is done competitively in each country, the director was concerned that the more quickly Korea's role in it disappears, the longer the current turmoil will continue.

This means that the trust and capabilities Korea has built up over the past decades as a global mecca for clinical research could be set back in a moment.

Just a month ago, this reporter met with the head of research and development at a global pharmaceutical company visiting Korea and heard him praise the country's research capabilities. He spoke of how important Korea and its researchers were to developing his company's clinical trials.

A month later, all of the Korean clinical trial practitioners he praised decided to resign.

Who is undermining the medical advancements, research capabilities, and trust that Korean researchers have built over the years? And who is claiming that the pharmaceutical and biotech industry is Korea’s new growth engine and the country’s research infrastructure is the key to making it happen, yet cutting R&D budgets and reversing all the hard work that has been done?

Recently, the Medical Professors Association of Korea acknowledged that they are responsible for the current situation and said they would actively participate in discussions to improve the healthcare system.

The government should allow large hospitals to return to their roles as soon as possible before Korea's medical science and industry regress further.