The medical community diminished the government's plan to invest about 5 trillion won ($3.7 billion) in medical education, calling it “absurd.”

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education released the “Investment Plan for Improving Medical Education Conditions” and announced  it would invest 2 trillion won to improve medical education, and 3 trillion won to innovate the training system for specialties by 2030.

However, the Korean Medical Association (KMA) believes the plan is a “tinkering to deceive the public.”

In a press release, the association criticized the 5 trillion won plan, saying it “has no analysis and basis, and no social consensus or public approval, just like the policy to increase medical students by 2,000.”

The KMA said the government and the Presidential Office are “unilaterally injecting taxpayer money” to “protect their petty self-esteem” and that the plan is a “ridiculous idea.” It expressed regret that the government is “trying to solve the problem with tinkering prescriptions” while leaving fundamental solutions behind.

The nation’s largest doctors’ group said the government's plan “includes loans that have nothing to do with the national treasury, and it omits support for training hospitals for specialist training.

“In reality, the 5 trillion won will be far less than that and absurdly small to support the medical education environment,” it added.

“The money should be spent on normalizing medical fees and regional healthcare,” it said. “We don't have to wait so long to train doctors. Instead of stopping the train, which is called the medical school enrollment quota increase, the government is pouring fuel on it.”

The Korean medical system, which was the envy of the world before February, has been ruined because of the government's ego, the organization said. It added that it is obvious that even the 5 trillion won of taxpayer money will not fix the medical crisis.

“The Office of the President, the government, and the ruling party should stop their divergent actions on increasing the number of medical school students and present a single, unified plan to the medical community,” it said.

The KMA reiterated its call for the government to cancel all the recruitment procedures and start discussing medical school admissions for the 2027 academic year.