A day after the deadline for the nation’s medical students to resume their studies, the Ministry of Education announced that nearly 97 percent have returned, but medical students told a different story.

According to the ministry on Tuesday, 96-point-nine percent of students at the country’s 40 medical schools have come back.

Among the so-called Big Five medical schools, Seoul National University, Sungkyunkwan University, Ulsan University and the Catholic University of Korea saw 100 percent of their students register for classes, while the figure for Yonsei University stood at 93-point-eight percent.

The school with the lowest return rate was Inje University with only 24 percent, but the registration deadline at the school is this coming Friday.

The government announced its March 31 deadline early last month, promising to set the medical school admissions quota for the 2026 academic year at three-thousand-58 if enough students returned.

That figure would be a return to the earlier admissions quota, before the government raised it last year and triggered the mass boycott of classes by medical students. 

However, the Korean Medical Student Association said in a press release on Wednesday that its own survey of about six-thousand-500 students at 15 universities found that only three-point-eight percent of students are taking or plan to take classes, adding that the association will continue to fight. 

This comes as some students continue to boycott classes after registering.