President Yoon Suk Yeol met with the head of the nation’s trainee doctors’ group amid the ongoing dispute over the government’s medical reform plan. 

The presidential office said in a statement to reporters that Yoon held a closed-door meeting with Park Dan, emergency committee chief of the Korean Intern Resident Association on Thursday afternoon, carefully listening to the trainee doctors' stance during the meeting at the presidential office in Yongsan that lasted around two hours and 20 minutes.

The top office said that Yoon gave assurances that the opinions of the trainee doctors are respected when the government discusses its medical reform measures with relevant parties, including its plan to increase the nation's medical doctors.

During Thursday's meeting, the trainee doctors' representative also discussed the difficult working conditions and poor compensation levels junior doctors face.

In an internal notice to member doctors prior to the meeting, the trainee doctors' representative stated that there is no change in their demand that the government scrap its plan to increase the medical school admissions quota by two thousand seats a year. 

Some 90 percent of the nation’s trainee doctors submitted their resignations in protest of the move in February and have yet to return to work.

The meeting came two days after the presidential office announced Yoon's intentions to meet the trainee doctors in person. 

Yoon on Monday delivered a televised address and reaffirmed his determination to expand the number of doctors in the nation. However, he left room for dialogue, urging doctors to come up with a unified alternative proposal if they wish to reduce the medical school admissions quota in question.