Son Ji-Hyoung

The general election on April 10 will not only be an election for a new parliament of 300 legislators but also a decisive moment for the presidency of Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been struggling to advance his agenda since his narrow election victory two years ago.

President Yoon also said the government has green lit a plan to allocate 128.5 billion won to address the growing distress in the medical infrastructure, which is suffering from staffing shortages.

At a Cabinet meeting held in his office Tuesday, Yoon said the plan to increase the school quota by 2,000 to 5,058 starting 2025, is "a minimum requirement" to address the doctor shortage and improve the medical system, especially in remote areas.

President Yoon's comments about the price of green onions during a visit to a hypermarket has prompted controversy, where the opposition party has even criticised him of being ignorant of the livelihood of citizens suffering from the steep inflation of essential costs.

Experts say the phenomenon is a by-product of the way Korea's rapid industrialization was influenced by authoritarian regimes in the 1970s and 1980s.

President Yoon Suk Yeol's fate was hanging in the balance as the exit poll of Wednesday's general election suggested a gloomy outlook for the ruling bloc which could raise the possibility of the conservative leader becoming a lame-duck president, with three years remaining of his term. Exit poll results Wednesday implied that opposition parties could secure two-thirds or more of the seats in the 300-member ...

The ruling bloc meanwhile managed to defend the 100-seat threshold that could otherwise have deprived President Yoon Suk Yeol of his veto power.

Observers see this as a bid for a breakthrough after the ruling party’s bitter defeat in the April 10 parliamentary elections.

The association's new leader, Lim Hyun-taek, has demanded the Yoon administration scrap its quota hike plan and return to square one as a condition to begin dialogue.

However, he dismissed the continued calls for a special probe into the controversy as a political attack by the opposition.