The number of foreign medical doctors in South Korea has been on a steady increase, data showed Saturday, amid a prolonged walkout by doctors and trainee doctors here over a government-proposed spike in the medical school quota.

The report comes amid plans by the health ministry to allow foreign medical doctors to practice medicine in the country when needed, even before they obtain local licenses.

According to the data submitted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare to Rep. Kim Mi-ae of the ruling People Power Party, the number of foreign medical doctors practicing medicine came to 546 as of June, up 20.8 percent from 452 tallied in 2019.

The number has been on a steady rise since 2019 to 472 in 2020, 485 in 2021, 500 in 2022 and 521 the following year, showed the data.

Foreign doctors who wish to practice medicine in the country must pass the national certification exam to obtain a medical license after graduating from a certified medical school in other countries and obtaining a medical license from the country where their school is located.

The health ministry earlier said it may consider allowing locally unlicensed foreign doctors to practice medicine to a certain extent when there is a "serious" health and medical condition in the country.

The government has said the country may face a serious shortage of doctors, especially at general hospitals that are designed to treat critically ill patients, as thousands of doctors and trainee doctors have quit their jobs since February when the government pushed to permanently increase the medical school quota by 2,000.

Local hospitals earlier sought to hire over 7,600 trainee doctors for their training programs starting next month, but only 104 had applied for the positions while many doctors also vowed to boycott the training of new applicants, calling on the government to scrap the medical school quota hike.

The hospitals began rolling out new recruitment notices for trainee doctors this week. Many believe few will return to the hospitals.