‘Government will immediately appeal if court suspends increasing medical school students’

The government expressed an intention Monday to immediately appeal to the Supreme Court if the Seoul High Court cites suspending the enforcement of an increase in the medical school enrollment quota.

The government said so at a regular briefing of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.

"The government hopes and expects that the Seoul High Court will not cite suspending the enforcement order to increase medical school students," Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Park Min-soo said. "However, if it does, it will immediately appeal and seek a Supreme Court ruling quickly."

Park noted that a citation would be very disruptive to the normal timeline for admissions, adding that the government strongly hopes this will not happen.

Meanwhile, the government submitted all data and materials to the court.

The submitted materials data concerned various issues, such as:

-- The basis for deriving the figure of increasing the number of medical school students by 2,000

-- Data from the Healthcare Policy Review Committee (HPRC) and the Special Committee on Medical Workforce under the HPRC

-- News releases on the discussions of the Medical Issues Consultative Committee,

-- Data on the demand survey for more medical students by university

-- Reports on the activities of the Medical Education Inspection Team

-- News releases on the results of the quota allocation committee meetings and the allocation results

-- Data on the basis for identifying the educational and practice conditions of each university and the government's support plan to improve the educational conditions of medical schools

-- Data related to the decision to voluntarily adjust the number of medical school students for next year