SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea plans to increase medical school admissions by more than 3,340 students from 2027 to 2031 to address concerns about physician shortages in one of the fastest-aging countries in the world, the government said Tuesday.

The decision was announced months after officials defused a prolonged doctors’ strike by backing away from a more ambitious increase pursued by Seoul’s former conservative government. Even the scaled-down plan drew criticism from the country’s doctors’ lobby, which said the move was “devoid of rational judgment.”

Kwak Soon-hun, a senior Health Ministry official, said that the president of the Korean Medical Association attended the health care policy meeting but left early to boycott the vote confirming the size of the admission increases.

The KMA president, Kim Taek-woo, later said the increases would overwhelm medical schools when combined with students returning from strikes or mandatory military service, and warned that the government would be “fully responsible for all confusion that emerges in the medical sector going forward.” The group didn’t immediately signal plans for further walkouts.

Health Minister Jeong Eun Kyeong said the annual medical school admissions cap will increase from the current 3,058 to 3,548 in 2027, with further hikes planned in subsequent years to reach 3,871 by 2031. This represents an average increase of 668 students per year over the five-year period, far smaller than the 2,000-per-year hike initially proposed by the government of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, which sparked the monthslong strike by thousands of doctors.

Jeong said all of the additional students will be trained through regional physician programs, which aim to increase the number of doctors in small towns and rural areas that have been hit hardest by demographic pressures. The specific admissions quota for each medical school will be finalized in April.

“We all remember the difficulties experienced by both the public and medical workers because of conflicts over the scale of physician training,” Jeong said. She said the government will work with experts to “develop and responsibly implement a range of measures for strengthening regional, essential and public health care.”

The country experienced modest disruptions in services after thousands of trainee doctors walked out of hospitals in 2024 in protest of the Yoon government’s plans to increase the yearly medical school admissions cap by 2,000, which aimed to add up to 10,000 doctors by 2035. Doctors’ groups warned that medical schools were ill-equipped to handle such a steep increase in students and that the quality of services could suffer. Critics accused the groups of prioritizing concerns over future incomes while ignoring the country’s looming physician shortages.

Faced with prolonged strikes, Yoon’s government eventually slowed the planned increases in medical school admissions, allowing 1,500 additional students to enroll in 2025. But the conflict remained largely unresolved until Yoon was impeached in December 2024 over his brief declaration of martial law earlier that month, which ultimately led to his removal from power in April 2025.

The current government of liberal President Lee Jae Myung restored the annual admission cap to 3,058 for 2026, accommodating medical schools’ demands and encouraging remaining trainee doctors to return.