A group representing the nation's nurses staged a rally in front of the presidential office on Friday, urging President Yoon Suk Yeol to push for the enactment of the Nursing Act under the 21st National Assembly.

An estimated one-thousand members of the Korean Nursing Association(KNA) called on the president and the rival political parties to show their resolve to pass the bill by the end of the current parliament on Tuesday.

On Thursday, the association declared that unless the nursing bill is passed, it will boycott the government's trial project giving nurses extra responsibilities. As part of the project, nurses have been given legal permission to execute some doctors' duties, a plan which was implemented amid the prolonged medical vacuum caused by a medical reform dispute.

In a statement, KNA President Tak Young-ran said 530-thousand nurses in the country have stood by their patients while doctors have left their jobs in protest of the state-led expansion of the medical school admissions quota.

The association chief called for the establishment of legal protections and compensation for the nurses, stressing that hospitals are forcing nurses to resign or take their annual leave due to financial difficulties.