SEOUL (AFP) – A South Korean doctor has been arrested for allegedly creating and distributing a “blacklist of colleagues who are not participating in an ongoing walkout over medical training reforms, media reports and a doctors’ organisation said yesterday.
The case marks the first arrest of a trainee doctor in more than six months of conflict between the government and junior medical practitioners over the prolonged work stoppage, which has resulted in the deaths of some emergency patients.
The medic was arrested on Friday for allegedly creating a list with the names and personal information of colleagues who had either returned to work or otherwise abandoned the walkout, then repeatedly distributing it with malicious intent through applications like Telegram, according to Yonhap News Agency.
The head of the Korean Medical Association (KMA), South Korea’s leading doctors’ body, met with the detained trainee at a police station in Seoul yesterday, saying afterwards that the government was to blame for the situation.
“I believe that everyone on the blacklist, as well as the arrested trainee doctor, is a victim,” KMA chief Lim Hyun-taek told reporters.
The trainee was being detained on stalking charges, as authorities determined he had harassed the victims by sharing their information – such as phone numbers and their alma maters – without their consent, according to Yonhap and other local reports.
