How is $184 going to restore anyone’s “livelihood”?:
Rep. Park Chan-dae, the new floor leader of the Democratic Party, speaks at the National Assembly in western Seoul on May 3, 2024. (Yonhap)
The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) plans to propose legislation providing cash handouts of 250,000 won (US$184) to the entire population as its first bill of the new National Assembly set to open later this month, its new floor leader said Monday.
Rep. Park Chan-dae unveiled the plan in a radio interview with local broadcaster MBC after DP leader Lee Jae-myung asked President Yoon Suk Yeol last Monday to accept his election pledge for the cash handouts as a way to help restore the people’s livelihoods.
Being a farmer in South Korea is definitely not a lucrative business and very dependent on subsidies according to this report:
I ask people around me how much money I earn from farming in Korea on average per year. It usually refers to about 30 million won to 60 million won. Maybe it’s because there’s an amount of money I heard from somewhere. That’s roughly correct, as farm household income averaged 46.1 million won in 2022.
However, among them, the actual agricultural income earned from farming is only 9.5 million won. It’s about a fifth. The rest are non-agricultural income (19.2 million won), transfer income (15.2 million won), and non-ordinary income (2.2 million won). In other words, money earned from business or government direct payments or subsidies accounts for 80% of farm income.
It looks like the doctor strike is slowly defeating the will of the Korean government to take action against them to get them back to work:
This photo taken April 30, 2024, shows a hospital in Daegu, 237 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)
The government appears to have shelved a plan to take punitive measures against a protracted walkout by trainee doctors and have pulled back slightly from its plan to increase medical school admission quotas amid a standoff with major doctors’ associations, according to officials Sunday.
Still, the doctors’ associations remained adamant over the issue and renewed their call for the government to revisit the medical reform from scratch, despite some signs of an internal split.
During a media briefing last week, Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said the government has decided to grant local universities autonomy in deciding their medical school quota by a range of 50 to 100 percent for the 2025 academic year in a bid to break the monthslong deadlock, according to officials.
Additionally, the government has delayed the suspension of licenses for doctors who have been inactive for months under its “flexible disposition” policy since late March.
The big thing with this agreed to bill is that the special investgation cannot issue warrants:
The ruling and main opposition parties agreed Wednesday to revise a special bill mandating a new investigation into the 2022 Itaewon tragedy that claimed 159 lives, both sides said.
The bill, which was initially railroaded by the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) in January but vetoed by President Yoon Suk Yeol, calls for the formation of an investigation committee to look into the root cause of the tragedy, which took place amid a crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district during Halloween weekend in 2022.
The ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the DPK agreed on the committee’s makeup, period of operation and method of investigation, and will reflect the agreements in a revised bill before passing it through a plenary parliamentary session Thursday, they said.
Under the deal, the committee will not have the authority to conduct investigations ex officio or seek warrants, operate for up to a year with the possibility of extending its term by up to three months, and comprise a chair who will be chosen following consultations between the rival parties and four members recommended by each party.
The American man who had been protesting around Seoul for years to get the Korean government to return his kidnapped kids did actually get them returned recently:
John Sichi, center, plays with his children at their home in San Francisco, Calif., after they returned to the United States on April 18. Courtesy of John Sichi
American citizen John Sichi was recently reunited with his two children after a years-long journey to retrieve them, following their abduction by his Korean spouse. Sichi’s family, originally based in California, experienced upheaval when his spouse vanished with their children in late 2019 after relocating to Korea.
Now resettled in San Francisco, Sichi and his two children — a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl — are piecing their lives back together and envisioning a future that once seemed lost.
You can read more at the link to find out what he went through to get his kidnapped kids returned to him. I do feel really bad though for the kids, this has to be a shock for them to lose their mother like this. Considering this was a kidnapping case I would doubt the mother would have any visitation rights after what she did.
Mask wearing at hospitals to be deregulated A medical worker wearing a mask walks past a notice regarding mask-wearing guidelines at a university hospital in Daegu, 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on April 30, 2024, one day prior to the deregulation of mandatory mask wearing at hospitals in more than four years after the outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic in the country. (Yonhap)
Some more interesting trails near the Korean DMZ are set to open this month:
Ten peace-themed trails near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), separating the two Koreas, will open to the public in mid-May, the government said Tuesday.
The trails are located across border towns and cities in the provinces of Gyeonggi and Gangwon, as well as the western border island of Gangwha, according to the defense and culture ministries.
The trails are set to open May 13. Visitors can sign up for trips on the government-run website (www.dmzwalk.com) and mobile app Durunubi, according to the ministries.
The DMZ, which is about 250 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide, is one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, with the rival Koreas technically in a state of conflict, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
It is amazing that doctors would just cancel appointments like this at the last minute. Who knows how long some of these patients have been waiting for an appointment before they were cancelled:
Some medical professors at the country’s three major hospitals, Seoul National University Hospital, Severance Hospital and Korea University Hospital, suspended surgeries and outpatient clinics on Tuesday for one day, as previously announced, to protest the government’s plan to expand the number of new medical students by 2,000 a year.
The main hall at SNUH’s Cancer Hospital was without medical staff Tuesday, while a number of patients wandered around the ward, having just learned that the doctors wouldn’t be coming in. Some said they hadn’t been told that their appointments would be canceled or postponed; other said they had to wait in long queues, not knowing when their names would be called.
Protest against increase of medical students Professors and students at the medical school of Chungbuk National University in Cheongju, 112 kilometers southeast of Seoul, stage a protest on April 29, 2024, opposing the faculty’s plan to expand its medical student intake in line with the government’s medical reform initiative. (Yonhap)
