A group of trainee doctors have filed a lawsuit against their hospitals, demanding their resignation letters be accepted and claiming severance pay.

They also sought damages from the government and their training hospitals, claiming they could not find employment at other hospitals due to an injunction against accepting their resignation letters.

On Wednesday, two doctors who resigned from the National Medical Center (NCC) and one from the Catholic University of Korea Catholic Medical Center filed a lawsuit for severance pay and damages with the Seoul Central District Court.

They claimed one month's salary from their training hospitals as severance pay, under the provisions of the Labor Standards Act and the Employee Retirement Benefit Guarantee Act, which stipulate that the average wage of 30 days (one month's salary) or more must be paid as severance pay for one year of continuous work.

"Even if they want to work elsewhere, the government is blocking them. So, my clients decided to file a lawsuit for severance pay to clarify their intention to resign," said Kang Myung-hoon, a lawyer who works as their legal agent, in a telephone interview with Korea Biomedical Review on Thursday. "Doctors are workers and are subject to the Severance Pay Act. If we calculate the average wage of 30 days, it is about one month's salary for a doctor."

Kang continued, "Regardless of the amount of severance pay, what is important in this lawsuit is that doctors have the freedom to quit their jobs. Isn't it the responsibility of the state to guarantee freedom? It is only in totalitarian countries that doctors are told to work and not say anything else because they must always be by their patients’ bedside."

The trainee doctors also sued the government and their training hospitals for the salary they would have received if they had worked from mid-March to the present as damages. According to the plaintiffs, the government's injunction against accepting their resignation letters meant that they lost the opportunity to work at another hospital, so the government and the hospital should at least compensate them for that loss.

"If the doctors' resignation letters had been accepted earlier, they could have already worked at other hospitals or opened their clinics, although it is impossible to know how much money they could have earned," Kang said. "However, at the very least, it can be said that the doctors have suffered damages equal to the salaries they were receiving from the hospitals they worked at until just before they retired."

The government's order preventing the acceptance of resignation letters was also illegal itself, the lawyer said.

"The government issued an order prohibiting hospitals from accepting trainee doctors’ resignation letters under the pretext of causing serious harm to the public health," Kang said. "However, no such serious harm has occurred. It is said that large hospitals are in a business crisis due to the resignation of trainee doctors, but I don't think it has anything to do with public health."

Kang said he would help other doctors who want to join the lawsuit for severance pay. "There are procedures, including filing a complaint and submitting a response from the government and the hospital. So, the lawsuit will start in earnest in July or August at the earliest," he said.