Police probe 2 military doctors for writing collective action guidelines

Police are investigating two military doctors suspected of having written guidelines for collective actions by trainee doctors and spread them on social media, a top police official said Monday. Woo Jong-soo, chief of the National Office of Investigation (NOI), said that two people who wrote collective action guidelines for junior doctors on social media have been identified through a search and seizure, and both were confirmed to be military doctors. The probe began after the health ministry filed a complaint with police over the controversial posts shared in doctors' online chat rooms and Facebook, according to NOI officials. That is a separate case from a doctor now under police investigation on suspicion of writing a post on Medistaff, an online community of doctors and medical students, to urge trainee doctors to delete medical data before collectively resigning from their hospitals, they said. Woo also said police are investigating a student on leave from a medical school, in addition to a doctor, on charges of leaking a list of public health doctors who did not participate in the ongoing mass walkout by medical residents and interns. The health ministry asked police on March 12 to investigate the leak of internal documents, which contained a list of public health doctors and their working places. Over 90 percent of the country's 13,000 trainee doctors went on strike in late February to protest the government's plan to sharply increase the medical school admissions. Police have since been conducting extensive investigations into alleged illegalities related to their strike. Source: Yonhap News Agency