Lee Soo-yeon, a 27-year-old office worker in Seoul, can’t get enough of “Descendants of the Sun,” the ongoing Korean drama series that features a military romance between a solider and a surgeon. 　“I think the series has many things that I can’t really see or achieve in my real life, such as the sense of justice, responsibility and altruism,” she told The Korea Herald. “And on top of all that, it is just very romantic.”　The 16-episode series takes place in a fictional war-torn Mediterranean coun

Social Affairs April 8, 2016

When Kim Mi-eun was in middle school, she accidentally read a story about an incest victim in a newspaper. That’s when she realized she had been constantly raped by her father, who had told her to keep their “playing sessions” a secret. 　“I’d been abused by my father since I was a first-grader, and it lasted for 12 years,” Kim told The Korea Herald. “During sex education classes at school, they teach you to run away when a stranger tries to sexually abuse you. But they don’t specifically tell yo

Social Affairs April 3, 2016

South Korea issued a nationwide warning on Japanese encephalitis Sunday, urging the public to take precautionary measures including vaccination.　The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued the warning in response to discovery of the culex tritaeniorhynchus, a species of mosquito that carries the virus, in South Jeolla Province and Jejudo Island.　The virus is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable encephalitis in Asia. Most human infections are asymptomatic or result in only mil

Social Affairs April 3, 2016

　South Korean tobacco-makers and retailers expressed their opposition to the Health Ministry’s new antismoking policies, which require all firms to fix health-warning illustrations on their cigarette products, claiming the government is interfering with their rights to product design.　The new measures, scheduled to be implemented starting later this year, requires health warnings consisting of text and images to be printed on the top 50 percent of the front panels of all cigarette packages. Also

Social Affairs April 3, 2016

Park Eun-jeong (not her real name), a single mother of two, suffered a car accident just seven months after her divorce back in 2014. Her husband had agreed to wire 800,000 won ($688) monthly for child support when signing his divorce papers. But he abruptly changed his phone number and stopped paying the funds after learning about Park’s accident. 　Severely injured in the spine and unable to work, she relied on the government’s emergency needs allowance for seven months until she was told that

Latest News March 20, 2016

South Korea’s Gender Minister Kang Eun-hee expressed Seoul’s determination and “achievements” in eradicating violence against women and children at a United Nations meeting in New York on Tuesday, even as recent government statistics show otherwise.　“The Korean government especially acknowledges that child abuse is an important social issue requiring keen social attention and thus endeavors to strengthen the legal and policy framework,” the minister said at the two-week annual session of the U.N

Social Affairs March 16, 2016

More than 95 percent of South Koreans are against the Health Ministry‘s decision to bar geriatric hospitals from rejecting AIDS patients, the Korean Association of Geriatric Hospitals claimed Friday, citing their own research. 　The organization surveyed earlier this year a total of 5,627 South Koreans, including 674 family members of senior patients who needed geriatric care, as well as 996 health care workers in medical facilities that treat elderly inpatients. 　The research found that 95.9 per

Social Affairs March 11, 2016

More than 30 percent of foreign-born South Koreans aged 15-24 are not in school and out of work, while for 58.3 percent of them, their parents had divorced before they moved to South Korea, a report released by the Gender Ministry showed Wednesday.　“Foreign-born children” refers to young South Koreans who were born and grew up overseas and moved to Korea as minors, including children who were born to non-Korean citizens overseas and moved to Korea after one of their divorced parents -- usually t

Social Affairs March 9, 2016

　Han Min-ji (not her real name), a single mother in her late 30s, gave birth to her fourth child in January. She had three children from her previous marriage and had broken up with the newborn’s father, several months before the delivery. Still, she did not think that her single parenthood would prevent her from receiving the government allowance, which is given to all new parents as part of the efforts to tackle the nation’s low birthrate. 　When she visited the city hall in Namyangju, Gyeonggi

Social Affairs March 8, 2016

Nearly 80 percent of Korean women who were diagnosed with cancer while pregnant between 1995 and 2013 chose to continue with their pregnancies, a study by Samsung Medical Center showed Monday.　The study, which researched a total of 50,412 women who gave birth at the medical institution from 1995 to 2013, found that 87 women were diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. The average age of the patients was 32.5. They were on average 24 weeks pregnant at the time of their diagnosis.　According to the p

Social Affairs March 7, 2016