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The KHMU is organizing its annual One-Day School for all the ordinary members across the nation during April. The 2014 annual one-day school for members are being implemented in ten cities such as Seoul, Busan, Daegu, and Gwangju. It is expected that over 10,000 out of 44,000 KHMU members join the one-day school across the nation. This one-day training is combined with press conferences, rallies, demonstrations, and one-million signature, as part of KHMU’s national campaign against the government policy to commercialize and further privatize healthcare services.

On 7 April, commemorating the World Health Day, the KHMU held a press conference announcing their demands: to stop the privatization of healthcare, to defend peoples’ right to health care, to re-open the Jinju Medical Center, and to expand public healthcare services in the above-mentioned 10 cities in combination with rallies, marches and street campaigns.

In the press conference Yoo Ji-hyun, KHMU President urged, “the Park Geun-hye administration must discard its policy to privatize healthcare services and reinforce public healthcare to effectively reform the healthcare system in Korea.”

“KHMU workers fight against this further government policy of privatization to allow chaebols (Korean conglomerates) to run hospitals as profit-making corporations. We must transform the distorted supply system of healthcare, fight for increasing healthcare workforce (staffing-up), which is less than one third of OECD average level, and make our hospitals as the place where the needs of both workers and patients are looked considered.”

Around 600 to 1,000 KHMU members, who attended the one-day school organized in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi provinces, have also been participating in KHMU’s daily rallies and marches which are being held in front of the National Assembly (Korean parliament) from Monday to Friday in April.

On 10 April, KHMU launched the “Keepers for Peoples’ Railway and Peoples’ Health” together with the Korean Railway Workers Union (KRWU), which is an alliance network of KHMU and KRWU to fight against the government policy of privatization in railway system and healthcare services. In this rally, Philip Jennings, General Secretary of UNI, delivered his solidarity speech.

It is expected that in June the Korean government will push through the revised medical laws allowing further profit to be made from the health care system. The government has a position or intention to implement its policy of privatization, not by revising relevant laws through the National Assembly, but by changing the decrees of the Ministry of Health and Welfare with its own decision, thus circumventing the usual channels for health care law reform.