With the 2025 academic year starting this week, the education ministry said universities will sternly enforce school regulations against any first-year medical students who refuse to attend class to protest the medical school admissions quota hike.

At a press briefing Tuesday, Kim Hong-soon, head of the ministry’s medical school support bureau, said first-year students must attend classes or face disadvantages, as they were aware of the quota hike when they enrolled.

Kim said the government will not allow any additional flexibility for students who started in the 2024 academic year and are currently on a leave of absence in protest of the quota hike, pledging to monitor universities’ adherence to relevant rules.

The bureau chief stressed that no such collective leave of absence will be allowed this year, urging the students on leave to return to their studies by the fourth week of March.

When asked about the ministry’s delay in announcing measures to improve medical training, Kim said each university will first have to decide whether to combine this year’s first-year class with last year’s or train the two cohorts separately.