About 47-hundred trainee doctors have neither returned to work nor officially resigned since they left their worksite early this year in protest of the increase in medical school admissions quota.

The Health Ministry said on Sunday that data by training hospitals showed 56-point-five percent, or seven-thousand-648 of 13-thousand-531 trainee doctors, resigned.

As of 11 a.m. last Wednesday, one-thousand-167 trainee doctors were working at the training hospitals, while four-thousand-716 trainee doctors, who make up 35 percent of the total, have not returned and their resignations were not processed either.

These doctors are those who avoid contact from their hospitals, asking them to choose to return or resign, or those who refuse to respond to hospitals' notices of their resignations.

The government will not take any punitive measures against these non-returning or non-responsive doctors, but it plans to make it clear that it will not allow them to return to continue their training in March next year for the same grade and specialty.