Anchor: Medical professors have decided to resign en masse on March 25, following such collective action by trainee doctors and medical students in protest of the government's planned school admissions quota hike. Meanwhile the government seeks to carry out its allocation plan for the additional 2,000 medical school admissions slots. Our Yun Sohyang has more. 

Report: On Friday evening, an emergency steering committee of medical professors decided to start resigning en masse on March 25 during an online general meeting attended by professors from 20 schools, including Seoul National University and Hanyang University. 

The committee said there was overwhelming support for mass resignations from professors at 16 universities where a survey had been completed.

Committee chief Bang Jae-seung said the professors' decision to resign en masse is part of a desperate attempt to resolve the situation, urging the government to reconsider the plan to increase the quota by two-thousand. 

He also explained that the professors, who are set to discuss operations of emergency rooms and intensive care units on March 22, have agreed to continue looking after emergency and critical patients for as long as possible. 

The collective action will be autonomously carried out by professors at each school after March 25, which is the deadline for trainee doctors, who had been notified of the government's license suspension as an administrative action, to state their positions.

Meanwhile the government is accelerating its process of allocating the 2,000 additional medical school seats to universities.

Looking to enhance health care services in regional areas, the government plans to designate just 20 percent of the additional seats to medical schools in and around Seoul while the rest will be distributed to non-capital areas. 

The government aims to finalize the allocation by the end of this month at the earliest despite the protests from the medical society.

Yun Sohyang, KBS WORLD Radio news