This is what the doctor strike in South Korea is causing, pregnant women stuck in ambulances for six hours trying to find a hospital that will take them:
It is known that the pregnant woman asked 119 for help, saying, “The amniotic fluid is leaking,” but she was treated after waiting for six hours in an ambulance without finding a hospital. Fire officials knocked on the doors of 75 hospitals but were rejected.
According to the Chungbuk and provincial fire departments on the 15th, a report came into 119 at 11:25 a.m. the previous day that “a 25-week-old pregnant woman’s amniotic fluid burst” in Cheongju.
The 119 paramedics decided that it was an emergency situation where the pregnant woman was bleeding, and began looking for hospitals to accept patients.
The fire authorities requested 75 large hospitals, starting with Chungcheongbuk-do, from Incheon to Incheon, Gyeonggi-do, Jeolla-do, Gyeongsang-do, and Jeju-do, but all refused to transfer due to “no obstetricians” and “lack of newborn hospital rooms.”
You can read more at the link, but fortunately the woman and baby end of being saved.
It looks like MCST got caught pushing out unverified reports as facts:
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) recently released a webtoon based on the “North Korea Human Rights Report” that included the claim, “30 North Korean middle school students were publicly executed for watching South Korean dramas.”
However, the Unification Ministry, which published the actual human rights report, stated that no such information is included, raising suspicions that the MCST might have fabricated the news.
According to Rep. Yoon Hu-duk of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea, who is also a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, the MCST published a webtoon titled “Talking About the Lives of North Korean Residents Through the 2024 North Korea Human Rights Report” on July 30. The webtoon appeared on the “Korea Policy Briefing,” the official government website that introduces government policies.
In the webtoon, characters claim that “North Korea publicly executed 30 middle school students for watching South Korean dramas on USBs carried by balloons,” and “Not only that, but just recently, 30 teenagers around the age of 17 were sentenced to life imprisonment and execution for similar reasons.”
However, the 2024 North Korea Human Rights Report, which the MCST cited as the basis for the webtoon, does not contain such information.
You can read more at the link.
I guess being gay is not part of being Gangnam Style with complaints forcing the taking down of a gay app ad:
A giant-screen advertisement showing homosexual people kissing and embracing each other was taken down four days after it began airing on the streets of Seoul’s southern district of Gangnam due to a series of complaints.
The matchmaking app for homosexual people first appeared on the giant screen set up along the streets of Gangnam’s Nonhyeon-dong on Aug. 26 under a contract that calls for the ad’s airing at least 100 times a day for one year.
The images showed gay and lesbian couples looking at each other, kissing and embracing.
But the ad was suspended Aug. 30 at the request of the Gangnam Ward government.
“Many complaints were received,” a Gangnam Ward official said, adding the office asked for the ad’s suspension under related law that bans advertisements that are feared to harm traditional customs with obscene content.
You can read more at the link.
This seems like a logical thing for the government to do in response to the strike by Korean doctors:
Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo enters the venue of a briefing held in Seoul on Sept. 2, 2024. (Yonhap)
The health ministry said Monday it plans to deploy military physicians to hospital emergency rooms amid growing concerns over a possible disruption of emergency care during the Chuseok holiday due to a prolonged walkout by junior doctors.
Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo told reporters the government would send some 250 military and public health doctors to cope with emergency care before and after the holiday that runs from Sept. 14 through 18.
“We are reinforcing the staff by utilizing military and public doctors, while recruiting nurses and contract doctors,” Park said.
You can read more at the link.
Maybe the Korean government’s focus on trying the raise the national birth rate might be having some success if this small statistical is an indication of things to come:
The number of babies born in South Korea rose for the first time in more than eight years in the second quarter of 2024, data showed Wednesday, as the country is grappling with its ultralow birth rate.
A total of 56,838 babies were born in the April-June period, up 1.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the data compiled by Statistics Korea.
It was the first time since the fourth quarter of 2015, when the number went up 0.6 percent.
You can read more at the link.
The Yoon administration has already used up so much political capital pushing through the increase in the medical school quota, I can understand why they are upset with the party leadership trying to get them to suspend it:
President Yoon Suk Yeol has postponed his planned dinner with ruling People Power Party (PPP) leaders until after the Chuseok holiday, his office said Wednesday, amid differences with the PPP leader over the issue of the medical school quota increase.
Yoon had planned to host a dinner Friday with PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, floor leader Choo Kyung-ho, five Supreme Council members and the party’s policy chief, but the presidential office said the meeting has been put off to prioritize the issues of people’s livelihoods. (…….)
The postponement comes after Han proposed deferring the medical school quota increase for 2026 to help break an impasse over the government’s medical reform plans.
The presidential office reportedly balked at the idea, saying the government stands by its plan to increase admissions by 2,000 seats every year for the next five years.
Han took to Facebook on Tuesday to publicly propose the deferral of one year, noting a sudden increase in the number of students, including the approximately 3,000 current students who need to retake classes next year, could put a strain on medical schools.
You can read more at the link, but the medical school quota increase the government is implementing to increase the number of doctors in rural areas. However, current doctors have been protesting and striking to stop the quota increase which has put a strain on the nation’s medical system. They do not want the added competition from more doctors and are doing everything in their power to stop it and it appears the PPP’s leadership might be getting influenced by them.
