Concerns are growing over a bottleneck in Korea’s residency training system in 2031, when medical students from the classes of 2024 and 2025 are expected to graduate simultaneously.
An analysis suggests that more than 2,000 newly licensed doctors could fail to secure internship positions if the current quota system remains unchanged.
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Jang Woo-jin, head of the Education Environment Task Force at the Korean Medical Students’ Association (KMSA) and a student at Kyung Hee University College of Medicine, recently released findings from a study titled, “Estimating the Scale of the Initial Residency Training Bottleneck Caused by the Simultaneous Graduation of the Medical School Classes of 2024 and 2025 in 2031 and Analysis of Mitigation Scenarios: A School-Level Synthetic Cohort-Based Multi-Year Cascade Study.”
Using current second-year premedical student enrollment figures and the number of students expected to return after military service, Jang estimated the total number of residency applicants in 2031 at about 5,450, based on the average physician licensing exam pass rate of 94.7 percent.
However, Korea’s current internship quota stands at 3,358 positions, leaving an estimated shortfall of about 2,092 slots. Under the current training system, only 61.6 percent of graduates can begin internship training in the same year they graduate.
To account for uncertainty, Jang also conducted a Monte Carlo simulation. The analysis showed that even if internship positions were expanded by 2,000, the probability of a shortage would remain at 78.9 percent. In contrast, increasing the quota by 2,300 would reduce the risk of shortages to 7.0 percent, while expanding by 2,358 positions would lower the probability further to 2.5 percent.
“With the current level of residency capacity, it is highly likely that the demand for training positions in 2031 cannot be fully absorbed within the same year,” Jang said. “Considering the uncertainty involved, a temporary expansion of around 2,300 positions — larger than the simple point estimate of approximately 2,100 — will likely be necessary.”
He also warned that if the classes of 2024 and 2025 enter clinical clerkships simultaneously, the burden on teaching hospitals, supervising faculty, patient-contact opportunities, and evaluation systems could intensify.
“Relevantauthorities need to examine whether separating the curricula or staggering schedules could help ease bottleneck in clinical training,” he said, adding that further analysis is needed to determine whether splitting the educational tracks could also alleviate the future concentration of residency applications.
Kim Jung-hyun
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