As she took the stage to perform in Carnegie Hall before 107 Korean War veterans, singer Kim Insoon thought of her father, an American soldier stationed in South Korea in the postwar decades whom she had never met or even seen.

“You are my fathers,” she told the soldiers in the audience before singing, “Father”, one of her Korean hits.

“For me, the United States has always been my father’s country,” Ms. Kim said in a recent interview, recalling that 2010 achievement. “It was also the first place where I wanted to show how successful I had become – without him and in spite of him.”

Born in 1957, Ms. Kim is better known as Insooni in South Korea, where she is a household name. For more than four decades, she has won fans from generation to generation with her passionate and powerful singing style and cross-genre performances. Fathered by a black American soldier, she also broke the racial barrier in a country that was deeply prejudiced against biracial people, especially those born to Korean women and African American soldiers.

Her enduring and groundbreaking presence in the South Korean pop scene has paved the way for future K-pop groups to globalize. multi-ethnic line-ups.

“Insooni overcame racial discrimination and became one of the few singers who are widely recognized as pop divas in South Korea,” says ethnomusicologist Kim Youngdae. “She helped introduce South Koreans to biracial singers and broke the idea that K-pop was only for Koreans and Korean singers.”

Thousands of biracial children have been born as a result of the security alliance between South Korea and the US. Their fathers were American GIs who fought in the Korean War in the 1950s or who protected South Korea from North Korean aggression in the postwar decades.

Most of their mothers worked in bars that catered to soldiers. Although South Korea depended on the dollars the women earned, society treated them and their biracial children with contempt. Many mothers gave up their children for adoption abroad, especially in the United States.

The children left behind often struggled while maintaining their biracial identity a secret if they could, in a society where until a decade ago schools taught children to be proud of South Korea’s racial “purity” and “homogeneity.”

“Every time they said that, I felt like I was being singled out,” Insooni said.

At school, boys pelted her with racist comments based on her skin color, said Kim Nam-sook, a former school friend, “but she was a star at school picnics when she sang and danced.”

Now that she’s a confident sixty-year-old, she’s started one Golden girls K-pop concert tour with three divas in their fifties.

But Insooni’s confidence turned to wariness as she discussed her childhood in Pocheon, a city near the border with North Korea. Topics she still found too sensitive to discuss in detail included her younger half-sister, whose father was also an American soldier. When she was young, she said, she hated it when people stared at her and asked her origins, wishing she were a nun. locked up in a monastery.

She said her mother had not worked in a bar and remembered her as a “strong” woman who took whatever odd work she could find, such as collecting firewood in the hills, to feed her family. Almost all she knew about her father was that he had a name similar to “Van Duren.”

The mother and daughter never spoke about him, she said. Insooni didn’t try to find him either, assuming he had his own family in the United States. Her mother, who died in 2005, never married. Due to the stigma attached to having biracial children, she lost contact with many of her family members. When young Insooni saw her mother crying, she did not ask why.

“We both knew going there that we were going to fall apart,” she said. “I learned it early on as a child: you have to do the best you can with the card you’re dealt, instead of staying down the rabbit hole and endlessly asking why. You can’t restore times gone by.”

Insooni’s formal education ended in high school. She and her mother then lived in Dongducheon, a city north of Seoul with a large American military base. One day, a singer who performed for American soldiers came to her neighborhood to recruit biracial backup dancers.

“I hated that city and this was my way out,” she said.

Insooni debuted in 1978 as the only biracial member of the “Hey sisters”, one of the most popular girl groups at the time. She said TV producers made her cover her head to hide her Afro. In 1983 she released her first solo hit: ‘Every night”, still a karaoke favorite for Koreans.

A breakdown followed. Ignored by television, she performed in nightclubs and amusement parks.

But her time in the entertainment world helped shape her artistic identity, as she honed her live performance skills and versatility, learning to sing and communicate with children, the elderly and anyone else who came to hear her.

“I don’t say to my audience, ‘This is the kind of song I sing, so listen to them,’” she said. “I say, ‘Tell me what kind of song you like and I’ll practice it and sing it to you next time.’”

She was constantly preparing for her comeback on TV. Whenever she watched a TV music show, she would imagine herself there and practice “songs I would sing, dresses I would wear, and gestures I would make.” Her chance came when the national broadcaster KBS gave her weekly ‘Open concert” to a multi-generational audience in 1993. Since then, she has been a sought-after singer.

Although she did not have as many original hits as some other top singers, Insooni often adopted songs from others, such as “Goose’s dream” and made them nationally popular, reviewers said. She continued to reinvent herself, taking on everything from disco and ballads to R&B and soul, collaborating with a young rapper in “My friend.”

“Many singers faded away as they grew older, but Insooni’s popularity only increased in her later years, with her status as a singer rising with songs that appealed to the entire generational spectrum,” said Kim Hak-seon, a music critic.

South Koreans say Insooni’s songs — such as “Goose’s Dream,” which begins “I had a dream” — and her positive onstage demeanor resonate with them in part because of the difficulties she has faced.

“You come to her songs for the first time and feel like you want to hug her,” said Lee Hee-boon, 67, a fan. “But in the end you feel encouraged.”

Insooni, who married a South Korean university professor, gave birth to her only child, a daughter, in the United States in 1995, making her a U.S. citizen, she said. She feared that if her child looked like her, she would face the same discrimination she did.

Today, South Korea is becoming increasingly multi-ethnic. One in ten weddings is bi-ethnic, as men in rural areas marry women from poorer countries in Asia. The farms and small factories cannot run without migrant workers from abroad.

One of South Korea’s most popular rappers – Yoon Mi-rae, or Natasha Shanta Reid – sings about her biracial identity. K-pop groups love NewJeans have biracial or foreign members as their markets globalize.

Insooni welcomed the change, but questioned whether the country was embracing multiculturalism “from the heart” and not out of economic needs.

In 2013 she founded Tuition Fee Free Hae Millschool for multicultural children in Hongcheon, east of Seoul, after learning that a majority of biracial children were still not attending high school, decades after her own school life ended so early.

During the recent interview at school, students on campus rushed to hug her.

“You can tell me things that you can’t even tell your mom and dad, because I’m one of you,” she told children at an entrance ceremony this month.

Insooni sometimes questions her decision not to look for her father. She once told South Korean military officers that if they were sent abroad, they should never do what American soldiers did in Korea decades ago: “spread seeds for which you cannot take responsibility.”

“At Carnegie Hall, I thought there might be a chance, however slim, that some American veterans might have left children like me behind in Korea,” she said. “If they did that, I wanted to tell them to take the burden off their heads. Whether they are successful or not, kids like me have all tried to make the most of our lives in our own way.”

In the United States, many Major League Baseball games feature long periods of calm, punctuated by cheers when there is action on the field or when the stadium organ plays a catchy tune.

But in South Korea, a baseball game is a sustained sensory overload. Each player has a fight song, and cheering squads – including drummers and dancers standing on platforms near the dugouts facing the spectators – keep the chants going on almost constantly. Imagine being in a ballpark where every player, even a newcomer, gets the star treatment.

“You have to get ready to scream,” said Kim Seongjun, 26, a fan who attended an exhibition game in Seoul this weekend. “It’s fun to stand up and cheer.”

Also the food is on another level. Think of the ballpark as a giant buffet of Korean street food.

This is all in store for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres when they open the MLB season in Seoul this week. Here’s a guide for visiting fans.

When you enter a South Korean baseball field, you are encouraged to stand up and participate in cheering routines almost constantly, from the first pitch to the last. Fans typically watch their respective team cheer and repeat the chants, songs and dances performed by the cheerleaders, drummers and their leader, the ‘cheer master’.

The Korea Baseball Organization professionalized cheering teams in the early 2000s, partly to attract new fans. That has helped make ballparks inviting spaces in a country where many people work long hours and face enormous societal pressures.

“Our huge cheer culture is one of the reasons why baseball is such a popular sport here,” said Jung Jihoon, 22, who led the drum section at the Padres’ exhibition game on Sunday as they defeated South Korea’s national team 1- 0 defeated.

“It’s fun to lose yourself in the atmosphere,” Jung said, sitting with his drumsticks and bass drum in front of the door where the Padres’ cheerleaders were dancing.

To fully immerse yourself, follow the cheermaster’s directions. Cheermasters write fight songs and chants, among other things, and shout them during games, even when their teams are losing badly.

When the Kiwoom Heroes played the Dodgers on Sunday, Kim Jung-suk, 39, the South Korean club’s cheermaster, shouted, “Home run ball!” Home run ball!” Fans echoed that as they rhythmically smashed empty plastic bottles and toy baseball bats together.

Whenever a batter hit the ball, the crack of his bat turned the chant into a roar.

“In terms of the game, anyone could be interested in the Dodgers,” Kim said of the game, which featured the American team defeated his team 14-3. “But in terms of cheering, the Kiwoom Heroes are not left behind.”

Learn the fighting songs

Custom fight songs are played when a player enters the board. They usually contain the player’s name and a short melody.

Local fans can sing them by heart.

Kim Soowon, 38, who attended the Heroes game with her husband and children, said the team’s songs were so easy to learn that even her two-year-old twins knew them.

“Here, baseball games are a great place for office workers to come and scream after work,” she said.

For this week’s games, cheermasters spent weeks creating each MLB player’s fight song, adapted from commonly recognized melodies used by South Korean teams.

Fight songs are sung when a player steps up to the plate. Then, while taking on the opposing pitcher, the cheermaster leads chants calling for hits — or, if the team is down, a home run to turn the game around.

“Ohtani infield! Ohtani infield!” fans sang in Korean as beloved Dodger Shohei Ohtani batted during Sunday’s exhibition game. He struck out twice.

Every song has a dance. Don’t worry if you don’t know the moves. Each team has a group of cheerleaders who demonstrate them.

“I love the energy we send and receive as the fans follow our movements,” said Kim Hana, 25, a Heroes cheerleader. “We help you learn all the dances.”

The cheering, dancing and autograph signings have attracted young fans to baseball who might otherwise find the sport boring. “In the age of YouTube and TikTok, it’s hard to sit through a three-hour game,” said Barney Yoo, director of international operations at KBO.

The rituals also strengthen the bond between the teams and their devoted audiences, Bae Soohyun, 39, a cheerleader for South Korea’s national team, said Sunday.

“It’s a baseball experience that only South Korea can offer,” she said.

Eat something new

Baseball here can be a complete dining experience with Korean staples such as fried spicy rice cakes, stewed pork feet and ‘chimaek’, Korean slang for the combination of fried chicken and beer. Many fans carry multi-course meals to their seats, and some stadiums have barbecue areas for those who want to grill out.

Each South Korean ballpark also serves its own special dishes. Jamsil Baseball Stadium in Seoul is known for its spicy noodles in kimchi broth. In Suwon, south of the capital, fans rave about the dumplings and fried whole chicken.

And at Gocheok Sky Dome, where the MLB season openers are played, hundreds of people line up for crispy fried shrimp covered in a mayonnaise-based sauce. If you’re not afraid of spice, consider the “mala” sauce version for a tingly touch.

Stay until the end

There was some concern among officials scheduling this week’s games that all the singing might bother non-Korean players. But the weekend’s practice matches were more subdued than a usual Korean match. That may be because fans weren’t fervently looking for a particular outcome.

After the Dodgers played Sunday, the team’s manager, Dave Roberts, told reporters that his players had not found the cheering distracting. On the contrary.

“The environment and atmosphere were great,” he said.

One aspect of Korean fan culture will be comforting to the losers in the MLB games. While American fans may dejectedly leave early if their team seems too far behind to win, fans here typically stay until the final out.

South Korea’s government said Monday it planned to suspend the licenses of thousands of doctors who quit their jobs nearly two weeks ago, threatening to escalate a dispute that has shaken the country’s health care system.

The announcement came after thousands of doctors, nurses and medical professionals took to the streets on Sunday and gathered with banners reading: “Doctors are not criminals!

For more than a month, young doctors have been embroiled in a conflict with the government over the future of healthcare in the country. Nearly 10,000 interns and residents, about a tenth of all physicians in the country, have left their jobs, most ignoring Thursday’s deadline to return to work. On Monday, the government said it would revoke the licenses of about 7,000 of those doctors.

But two weeks after the strike, it remains unclear how the disagreement will be resolved.

“Why would we want to go back after the government treated us like the bad guys and didn’t respond to our demands?” said Lee Haeju, 32, who until recently lived at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital.

Dr. Lee — who said she had so little sleep during her first year of residency that it felt like she was operating on a 48-hour cycle instead of 24 hours — and her cohort have long complained about the pressure they face.

They say some of them don’t even make minimum wage, that their working conditions are Dickensian and that they are overburdened by complaints from patients who like to litigate. Authorities, they say, have long ignored systemic problems that made specialties like dermatology and cosmetic surgery more lucrative than essential services like emergency medicine.

Last month, the government issued a new health care policy that it said would address a long-standing doctor shortage by increasing the number of medical schools by about 65 percent per year. But interns and residents, known as doctors in training, said the government continued to ignore the real problems doctors faced.

“How many people would actually work in our department?” said dr. Lee, who specializes in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery.

Surveys show broad public support for increasing admissions to medical schools, the quota for which was last increased in 2006. The government points to statistics showing that South Korea has one of the fewest doctors per capita in the developed world. And it says increasing the number of doctors is crucial in a country with a rapidly aging society.

Faced with legal threats, hundreds of trainee doctors have returned to work, but the vast majority of them continue to protest.

The orders were issued to “prevent serious dangers arising from the collective actions of doctors in training,” Cho Kyoo-hong, the health minister, said in a written response to questions.

Under South Korean law, the government can force some doctors back to work to avoid disruptions to care. Violators can be fined up to 30 million won ($22,000) or imprisoned for up to three years.

For the time being, patients have been referred to smaller hospitals and clinics. Major hospitals have had up to half of their operations postponed, and nurses have been allowed to take over some of the duties of doctors. The government has opened military hospitals and extended the hours of public clinics, and while there have been disruptions, the health care system has not collapsed.

Doctors in training are a crucial cog in South Korea’s medical system. In large hospitals, they often make up a third of the staff and are often the first healthcare providers to care for patients.

Park Dan, 33, said he wanted to become an emergency room doctor to save lives. As a resident of Severance Hospital in Seoul, one of South Korea’s largest hospitals, he said he worked 100 hours a week, often seeing 20 patients every 60 minutes and having to wait hours to go to the bathroom.

“I thought my own life would be cut short in my attempt to save others,” said Mr. Park, who is also the head of the Korean Intern Resident Association.

South Korea has a universal healthcare system that provides care to all citizens. But doctors argue that the government has underinvested in essential services, making specialties such as emergency care and pediatrics less financially attractive to doctors. The government has said it will spend about 10 trillion won (or $7.5 billion) on essential health care services over the next five years.

Early-career physicians in South Korea typically work longer weeks and earn less than their counterparts in the United States. Interns and residents earn about $3,000 a month, which is less than minimum wage given their long work weeks, according to Lee Jaehee, an attorney representing some of the runaway doctors. Their shifts last up to 36 hours, and their work week can be up to 88 hours.

For trainee doctors, the situation is “similar to the Industrial Revolution, when young boys and girls were forced to work in factories,” said Dr. Lim Hyun Taek, president of the Korean Pediatric Association.

This is not the first time that doctors have protested against a government plan to increase the admission quota for medical schools. In 2020, a month-long doctors’ strike forced authorities to shelve a similar plan. But this time, the government has so far remained steadfast in its position and criticism, arguing that the strike has endangered the health and safety of the public.

The doctors reject that idea.

“We have cried with patients and held their hands on the road to recovery,” said Dr. Lee. “We are not criminals.”

Samsung phones. Hyundai cars. LG TVs. South Korean exports are available in almost every corner of the world. But the nation is more dependent than ever on imports to keep its factories and farms running: foreign labor.

This shift is part of the fallout from a demographic crisis that has left South Korea with a shrinking and aging population. Data released this week shows that the country broke its own record last year – again – for the lowest total fertility rate in the world.

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government has responded by more than doubling quotas for low-skilled workers from less developed countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of them now toil in South Korea, mostly in small factories, or on remote farms or fishing boats – jobs that locals consider too dirty, dangerous or too low-paid. With little say in choosing or changing employers, many foreign workers face predatory bosses, inhumane housing, discrimination and other forms of abuse.

One of them is Chandra Das Hari Narayan, born in Bangladesh. Last July, while working in a wooded park north of Seoul, he was assigned to cut down a tall tree. Although the law requires him to wear a safety helmet when doing such work, he was not given one. A falling branch hit his head, knocking him unconscious and causing blood to flow from his nose and mouth.

After his bosses refused to call an ambulance, a fellow migrant worker rushed him to a hospital, where doctors found internal bleeding in his head and his skull fractured in three places. His employer reported only minor bruises to authorities, according to a document he filed for workers’ compensation for Mr. Chandra without his approval.

“They wouldn’t have treated me like that if I was South Korean,” says 38-year-old Chandra. “They treat migrant workers as disposable.”

The work can be deadly, foreign workers were too almost three times as likely deaths in work-related accidents compared to the national average, according to a recent study. Such findings have alarmed rights groups and foreign governments; the Philippines in January forbade its citizens from taking seasonal jobs in South Korea.

But South Korea remains an attractive destination, with more than 300,000 low-skilled workers on temporary work visas here. (These figures do not include the tens of thousands of ethnic Korean migrants from China and former Soviet republics, who tend to face less discrimination.) About 430,000 more people have overstayed their visas and are working illegally, according to government data.

Migrant workers often land in places like Pocheon, a city northeast of Seoul where factories and greenhouses rely heavily on foreign labor. Sammer Chhetri, 30, arrived here in 2022 and sends $1,500 of his $1,750 monthly salary to his family in Nepal.

“You can’t make this kind of money in Nepal,” said Mr. Chhetri, who works from dawn to dusk in long, tunnel-shaped plastic greenhouses.

Another Nepalese worker, Hari Shrestha, 33, said his earnings from a South Korean furniture factory helped his family build a house in Nepal.

Then there’s the appeal of South Korean pop culture, globally popular TV dramas and music.

“Every time I call my teenage daughter at home, she always asks, ‘Dad, have you met BTS yet?’” says Asis Kumar Das, 48, originally from Bangladesh.

For nearly three years, Mr. Asis worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a small textile factory for a monthly salary of about $2,350, which he did not receive regularly.

“They never paid me on time or in full,” he said, showing an agreement his former employer signed with him promising to pay a portion of his back wages by the end of this month.

Mr. Asis is far from alone. According to government data, migrant workers report $91 million in unpaid wages annually.

The Ministry of Labor said it is making “every effort” to improve the working and living conditions of these workers. It sends inspectors to more workplaces, hires more translators and imposes fines on employers who abuse workers, the report said. Some cities are building public dormitories after local farmers complained that the government was importing foreign workers without adequate housing plans.

The government has also offered “exemplary” worker visas that will allow them to bring their families. Officials have said that South Korea plans to “bring in only those foreigners who are essential to our society” and “strengthen the crackdown on those staying here illegally.”

But authorities – which plan to issue a record 165,000 temporary work visas this year – have also cut back on some services, for example by stopping funding for nine migrant support centres.

In the decades after the Korean War, South Korea exported construction workers to the Middle East and nurses and miners to Germany. As it emerged as an economic powerhouse producing electronics and cars in the early 1990s, it began importing foreign workers to fill jobs shunned by the increasingly wealthy local workforce. But these migrants, classified as ‘industrial trainees’, were not protected by labor law despite their harsh working conditions.

The government introduced the Work permit system, or EPS, in 2004, eliminating middlemen and becoming the sole job broker for low-skilled migrant workers. It recruits workers on three-year visas from 16 countries, and also started offering seasonal work to foreigners in 2015.

But serious problems remain.

“The biggest problem with EPS is that it has created a master-servant relationship between employers and foreign workers,” said Kim Dal-sung, a Methodist minister who heads the Pocheon Migrant Worker Center.

That can mean inhumane conditions. The “housing” promised to Mr Chhetri, the farm worker, turned out to be a used shipping container hidden in a torn greenhouse-like structure covered in black plastic blinds.

During a bitter cold snap in December 2020, Nuon Sokkheng, a Cambodian migrant, died in a heatless hut. The government has introduced new safety regulations, but in Pocheon many workers still live in substandard facilities.

When EPS workers have abusive employers, they often have only two choices: endure the ordeal, hoping their boss will help them renew or renew their visa, or work illegally for someone else and live in constant fear. immigration raidssaid Rev. Kim.

In December 2022, 32-year-old Ray Sree Pallab Kumar lost most of the sight in his right eye after a metal piece thrown by his manager bounced off a steel cutting machine and hit him. But his employers, in southern Seoul, tried to blame him for the accident. According to a Korean-language statement, they tried to get him to sign even though he didn’t understand it.

Migrants also say they face racist or xenophobic attitudes in South Korea.

“They treat people differently based on skin color,” said Mr. Asis, the textile worker. “In the crowded bus they prefer to stand rather than take a seat next to me. I ask myself, ‘Do I smell?’”

Biswas Sree Shonkor, 34, a worker at a plastics factory, said his wages remained the same while his employer gave raises and promoted the South Korean workers he helped train.

Mr Chandra said even worse than the workplace injuries such as those he suffered at the arboretum was the way managers insulted foreign workers, but not locals, over similar mistakes.

“We don’t mind working hard,” he says. “It is not our body, but our mind that gets tired.”

Operations postponed. Appointments cancelled. Patients turned away from the emergency room.

For more than a week, procedures have been disrupted at some of South Korea’s largest hospitals as thousands of medical interns and residents have quit their jobs. A prolonged strike can have disastrous consequences.

The dispute began in early February, when the government proposed admitting more students to medical schools to address South Korea’s long-standing doctor shortage. Interns and residents, also known as doctors in training, responded by saying that the shortage did not apply to the entire sector, but was limited to certain specialties, such as emergency medicine. They said the government’s plan would not solve that problem, adding that they were victims of a system full of harsh working conditions and low wages.

The doctors then took to the streets to protest the plan, threatening to strike or leave their jobs. In general, senior doctors supported the claims of their younger colleagues. But surveys showed there was broad public support for strengthening the ranks of doctors, and the government didn’t back down. Some saw pushing back the doctors as a tactic to increase their pay.

Trainee doctors – who are a crucial part of major hospitals – started submitting their resignations on February 19. As of Wednesday, nearly 10,000, or about 10 percent of all doctors in the country, had done so, according to government data. But most of these layoffs have not been accepted by hospitals.

“It is impossible to justify collective action that holds people’s health hostage and threatens their lives and safety,” President Yoon Suk Yeol told reporters on Tuesday.

His government has said that if doctors return to work on Thursday, they will face no legal consequences. Otherwise, they risk losing their medical licenses and face fines of up to 30 million won ($22,000). The Health Ministry this week filed police complaints against a handful of doctors, accusing them of violating the medical law.

According to the ministry, almost 300 doctors were back at work on Thursday morning. But with most trainee doctors still out of work, the dispute shows no signs of resolution.

Here’s what you need to know.

What is the situation in hospitals now?

Many medical procedures have been postponed. Patients have been told at the last minute that their appointments have been postponed indefinitely. Some have been referred to smaller clinics. The government has temporarily allowed hospitals to allow nurses to take the place of doctors when necessary. Nevertheless, many major hospitals are still short-staffed, leading to complaints from the public.

One case this week was used by both sides to strengthen their argument. A woman in her 80s with terminal cancer was sent away from several emergency rooms after her heart stopped beating. Hospitals said they had excess capacity. When she was finally admitted, she was pronounced dead on arrival.

For the government and its supporters, it showed how a shortage of doctors can be fatal for patients — even as a government investigation concluded the woman’s death was not related to the doctor shortage.

For the doctors, this was the clearest sign of a structural problem that has long overloaded emergency rooms in South Korea. The country’s medical system is allowing patients with minor injuries or illnesses to seek treatment in emergency rooms, using resources that should instead go to patients in serious or critical condition, doctors claim.

What has the government proposed?

The need for more doctors in South Korea is acute, the government says, especially given its rapidly aging population. The country has approximately 2.6 doctors per 1,000 inhabitants an average of 3.7 in the countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Earlier this month, the Health Ministry proposed increasing the number of medical schools from 3,000 to around 5,000 students per year, starting in 2025. It would be the first increase since 2006 and, the government said, an additional 10,000 doctors in ten years time. The government also pledged to spend more than 10 trillion won to improve essential services across the country, especially healthcare in rural areas.

Doctors argue that increasing the number of medical students will do little to change the status quo. A similar attempt by Mr Yoon’s predecessor in 2020 to increase the number of doctors resulted in a month-long doctors’ strike. The government eventually suspended the expansion.

What do the doctors want?

Interns and residents have a long list of complaints. While some established doctors in South Korea are well paid, trainee doctors say they work long hours for little pay, even though they are at the heart of the country’s medical system. According to the medical community, interns and residents earn approximately $3,000 per month and often work more than 80 hours per week. Young physicians often make up a third or more of the workforce in some large hospitals and often provide primary care for patients.

They say the government has ignored structural problems that make some specialties such as cosmetic surgery and dermatology more lucrative than vital services such as emergency medicine and paediatrics. The Korean Medical Association and the Korean Intern and Resident Association, two of the country’s largest physician groups, have demanded better working conditions for young doctors in essential services, more equal pay across all specialties and the repeal of the expanded medical school admissions cap.

Under the current circumstances, it is “impossible for doctors to care for patients with a sense of mission,” Joo Soo-ho, a spokesman for the Korean Medical Association, said on Tuesday.

Is there a political element to the dispute?

The plan to increase the number of medical students is popular broad support among South Koreans, studies show. In aas many as 76 percent of respondents supported the government’s plan.

The proposal to increase admissions to medical schools is part of a broader healthcare policy plan announced by President Yoon months ahead of crucial April parliamentary elections. His approval rating has centimeter up as he stood his ground against the doctors.

For most of his two years in office, Mr. Yoon has struggled with low approval ratings, rising consumer prices and scandals linked to his wife, his policies and his handling of disasters. By implementing changes that his predecessor tried but failed to implement despite physician resistance, Mr. Yoon to improve his profile in an election year.

Choe Sang Hun reporting contributed.