SEOUL – President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law declaration spilled over into the health care sector on Dec 5, facing harsh criticism from the medical community and the nation’s top health and welfare official.
Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong, who attended the Cabinet meeting just before the martial law announcement was made late Dec 3, said during the National Assembly’s health and welfare committee meeting on Dec 5 that he “does not agree with the martial law declaration”.
When asked by Representative Kim Sun-min of the minor opposition Rebuilding Korea Party if he agrees that the declaration is “illegal and unconstitutional”, Mr Cho said “yes” without elaborating further.
The medical sector echoed the minister’s view, lambasting the decree issued by Army Chief of Staff General Park An-su that went into effect as of 11pm on Dec 3, which stipulated that all medical professionals, including striking junior doctors, “must resume their duties within 48 hours”.
“(The president) equated trainee doctors who have resigned with strikers and used inflammatory rhetoric by framing them as ‘anti-state forces’, but that turned out to be a description of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration.
“Instead of protecting the lives and safety of the public, he has become a part of an unconstitutional regime,” the statement issued by the Medical Professors Association of Korea late Dec 4 read.
The emergency committee of medical professors at Seoul National University and Seoul National University Hospital said the martial law decree “violates the Constitutional principles” and “shakes the foundation of democracy”.
The Korean Medical Student Association also said that the country’s healthcare, democracy and order, described as the pillars of society, “must not be destroyed by an act of tyranny”. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK
