While the two Koreas seem to be taking place, who knows if something else, the southern neighbors live with anguish a problem that has been entrenched too long: in an increasingly aged country, becoming old is a condemnation of poverty. And the young? They are also indirect protagonists of this endemic evil: they have agreed to study the same.
Brain drain. In South Korea, an unprecedented phenomenon is taking place: students even leave the most prestigious universities in the country (Seoul National, Yonsei and Korea University, known as the Sky group) to pursue a medical career. Only in 2024 2,481 dropouts were registered in these three institutions, the highest figure in 18 years and 17% more than the previous year.
Most of the deserters They came from natural sciences and humanities, attracted by the expansion of access quotas to medical faculties, which went from 3,000 to 5,000 places per year in a government attempt for alleviating the shortage of doctors in an increasingly aging society. Medicine, perceived as the most prestigious and profitable profession in the country, has become the preferred destination even for those who had reached the quoted places of the elite universities.
Pressure on medical schools. The change, however, is overflowing the ability of medical faculties, which already dragged structural problems. Overloaded teachers, strikes and mass classrooms are now the norm, in a context where resources do not grow at the same rate as demand. At the same time, fundamental disciplines such as basic sciences and humanities suffer an emptying that threatens the country’s intellectual diversity and erodes the potential for long -term innovation.
Academics such as Theodore Jun Yoo warn that this tendency mine educational balance and puts at risk the production of critical thinking and technological advancement, while low birth rate reduces the need for new teachers and researchers, weakening the national academic basis.
The roots of the trend and the AI. The rise of this career towards medicine does not arise from nothing. Studies show that since 2022 more than a quarter of students with the best notes in the university admission exam have preferred medicine to Sky universities, a sign that traditional disciplines have lost attractiveness as an option for the future.
For academics such as Robert Fouser, the proliferation of artificial intelligence and the perception that humanities and science no longer guarantee job stability have accelerated escape. Japan experiences a similar phenomenon, with young people who choose regional medical schools instead of specializations in social or humanistic sciences in Tokyo, which reflects a regional pattern of more armored careers in front of technological disruption.
Mental of medicine. Paradoxically, some experts point out that this fever for medicine may not be the panacea or the best long -term bet. The profession itself is exposed to deep transformations derived from AI and demographic changes that are already affecting pediatrics, reduced by the fall in birth rate and the displacement of professionals towards more profitable specialties such as dermatology.
In other words, this suggests that, in the long term, engineering or technological development careers could offer more resilience than an overcrowded medical profession.
Proposals to stop the crisis. Given this panorama, more and more critical voices ask the government to act quickly. It is proposed to make medical training more expensive and force new graduates to work at least six years in rural areas, where doctors’ shortage is more pressing.
These measures seek to stop the avalanche towards the faculties of Medicine and redistribute human resources more balanced. However, the situation reflects a substantive tension: social obsession with economic stability and prestige, in the face of the national need to preserve a diverse university system capable of sustaining innovation and technological leadership.
Educational crossroads. The “career towards medicine” in South Korea not only reveals social anxieties about the future work, but also exposes the limits of a model that privileges a single way to the detriment of other essentials for the integral development of the country.
The risk seems clear: in the search for individual security, the collective capacity of producing new ideas, of forming critical thinkers and of guaranteeing a balance in professional training is undermined. If you want to also, the final paradox is that, in its attempt to ensure more doctors, South Korea could be weakening precisely the bases that have allowed it to prosper as one of Asia’s most innovative economies.
Image | ITU PICTURES
In WorldOfSoftware | South Korea has found the formula to improve their birth rate: that companies pay fortunes to their employees for having children
In WorldOfSoftware | South Korea and North Korea had been engaged in the “Altavoces War” for years: it has suddenly ended
