Tag: schools

Children pack a makeshift pool set up on the playground of an elementary school in Seoul on Aug. 5, 2016, when the daily high posted 36 C. (Yonhap)

In the totally unsurprising news of the day, North Korea has nursery schools that promote the use of rifles, RPGs and hand grenades to its toddlers:

We foreign journalists were supposed to be marveling at the model farm on the outskirts of the North Korean capital – a 1,200-worker-strong vegetable commune with lots of amenities for the fieldhands, including homes equipped with solar power panels and solar water heaters. And I did manage an odd appreciation for the huge mosaic in the parking lot, depicting North Korean founding father Kil Il Sung gazing beatifically across a field of cabbages.

But when our government minders brought us reporters into the Changchon farm community’s nursery school, my brain got a little fixated on the wall art: Just past a painting of children skipping hand-in-hand beneath large letters saying “We Are Happy!” were some fratricidal forest friends.

First to catch my eye was a duck firing a machine gun at a wolf. Then I noticed the squirrel with hand grenades taking out a cowering weasel, with backup provided by a hedgehog with a RPG launcher.  I suppose in a country that has long followed a policy of songun, or “military first,” the powers-that-be figure it’s never too early to let the youngsters know what’s what.  [LA Times]

Here is what the kids are watching, this sounds better than Pororo!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuXJBJWR36Y

“Squirrel and Hedgehog,” my guides informed me, is as familiar to and beloved by North Korean kids as any Disney toon is to Yankee tots. Produced by state-run SEK Studios, the long-running animated TV show centers on the inhabitants of a make-believe place called Flower Hill, which is populated by squirrels, hedgehogs, and ducks.

The squirrels are the leaders, while the hedgehogs are the soldiers. Ducks are, duh, the navy. As you might guess, this squadron represents North Korea. The Flower Hill gang must contend with evil weasels (Japan) and wolves (the United States), while occasionally dealing with friendly but drunk bears (Russia).

“It’s a classic,” my guide, Ms. Hwang, informed me. “Everyone knows Squirrel and Hedgehog.”

You can read the rest at the link.

It will probably take just one kid to get infected by MERS to cause all these schools to get shutdown again:

President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday visited a primary school in southern Seoul, which has reopened following the weeklong shutdown over the deadly MERS virus.

The visit is the latest in a series of public activities designed to allay public fears about the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that has killed 19 South Koreans.

The school had been closed for seven days last week as a precautionary measure against the virus. The school is located near Samsung Medical Center, which has been a major source of infections.

“I will do my best to ensure that (the virus) is brought to an end,” Park said in a meeting with students during a separate visit to a middle school in western Seoul. The middle school was closed for two days last week.

The visit came as South Korea reported four new cases of the viral respiratory illness that put the total number of people diagnosed with the disease at 154 — about half of them infected in Samsung Medical Center.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

South Korean authorities have identified the man who first brought MERS to Korea after traveling to the Middle East:

The World Health Organization warned that the MERS outbreak in South Korea is likely to grow, as the number of people under quarantine crept up to 1,369 on Wednesday.

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed five new cases — increasing the number of people with the disease to 35. These new cases were contracted within hospitals.

So far, three people have died after contracting the respiratory virus in South Korea, the country’s Health Ministry said Thursday, in the largest MERS outbreak outside Saudi Arabia.

The first case, concerning a man who returned to South Korea after traveling to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, was reported on May 20. The person had not been ill during his travels, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 900 schools have shut to prevent the spread of the virus, according to South Korea’s education ministry.   [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but the Park Guen-hye government is taking a lot of criticism for not reacting better to the initial outbreak.  I don’t see how the government is to blame for a lack of a hospital not taking the first case seriously from the start.  It seems that once the virus spread the government formed a task force to begin to take measures to stop the spread, but the initial poor handling from the hospital is what is really to blame. However that is the way it goes in Korea where the President tends to get blamed for everything that goes wrong.  It will be interesting to see if the Korean left tries to capitalize on this politically?

Also of interest is that South Korea has closed over 900 schools while us military schools remain open.  It will be interesting to see how long the US military schools remain open if there is any more spread of the virus on Osan AB for example.