Category: Korea-General Topics

Korea is the latest country to allow terminally ill patients to end treatment if they so desire:

The National Assembly on Friday passed the Death with Dignity Act, which allows certain life-sustaining medical treatments for terminally ill patients to be stopped. The act will take effect in January 2018.

The National Assembly convened both the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and a plenary session on Friday to vote on the bill. At the plenary session, 202 out of 203 lawmakers attending approved the bill, with one abstaining.

It has taken 19 years for the act to pass.

The issue was first brought up in 1997, after a doctor at SMG-SNU Boramae Medical Center was indicted on a charge of abetting homicide after allowing a terminally ill patient to be discharged.

According to the act, terminally ill patients or their family can make the decision to end four life-sustaining medical treatments – cardiopulmonary resuscitation, hemodialysis, anti-cancer treatment and artificial respiration – if the patients have no chance of being cured or recovering. Doctors will not be punished if they stop these four life-sustaining medical treatments if patients or their families request they be stopped. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

The ROK has a history of protectionism and it appears that is what they are trying to do with their legal services sector to protect them from foreign competition:

A bill to open Korea’s legal services market to law firms based in the European Union and the United States was put on hold a day ahead of the final vote by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee due to strong backlash from those countries’ ambassadors.

On Thursday, ambassadors from the European Union, United States, United Kingdom and Australia visited the committee chairman and strongly protested that the bill goes against the free trade agreements between those countries and Korea. They said Korea would even risk trade conflicts if the bill is passed without amendments.

The Foreign Legal Consultant Act, which would allow the final stage of opening the local legal services market, was scheduled to be up for vote at the committee on Friday, the last step before submitting the bill to a plenary session of the National Assembly.

The four ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert and U.K. Ambassador Charles Hay, pointed to a clause banning foreign law firms from owning a stake greater than 49 percent in a joint venture as unfair, arguing that the rule would unfairly protect Korean law firms.

They also urged lawmakers to ease or abolish a qualification requirement for foreign law firms. Under the current bill, a foreign law firm hoping to launch a joint venture with a Korean law firm is required to have more than three years of experience in legal services.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

It does seem like every few years we hear about a movie studio theme park coming to South Korea that never materializes.  Maybe someone in the ROK should pursue a K-drama theme park instead of waiting to partner with a major Hollywood studio to make one?:

Is Korea a burial ground for movie studio theme parks? Every attempt to attract amusement parks by major U.S. film studios has failed in the past decade.

A huge plot of land in Songdo, Incheon, has remained idle for the last seven years. In the midst of tall weeds is a worn down sign that reads in Korean, “Paramount movie park Korea construction site.” In 2008, the site was chosen to be home to a Paramount theme park. The park was supposed to turn the area into a global tourist attraction by offering Asia’s first destination linked to Paramount, a studio famous for blockbuster films like the Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible franchises.

The project never went through because the Korean company driving it, Daewoo Motor Sales, was financially strapped due to the global financial meltdown in late 2008.
“This used to be a neighborhood that couples frequently visited but it has been empty for a long time,” said a 58-year-old realtor. “The damage caused by the cancellation of the project on the region’s commercial businesses has been huge.”

Since 2007, plans for four U.S. movie theme parks were announced but none were ever built. Analysts say the 2008 financial crisis was one cause, followed by friction between the studios and Korean project-operators.
The situation was similar when the South Gyeongsang government tried building a global theme park in the Busan-Jinhae Free Economic Zone. The local government and Fox Studios signed a memorandum of understanding in 2014, but the project never materialized.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

I just can’t believe they actually had to do research to figure this out.  Maybe I should start my own “ROK Drop Institute of Common Sense” and get in on some these research dollars?:

A state-run research agency says the more affluent and intimate married couples are, the more likely it is for them to have a second child.

The Korea Institute of Child Care and Education under the Prime Minister’s Office released the conclusion in a report after analyzing the 2012 Panel Study on Korean Children conducted on around 400 couples with a single child.

According to the analysis, the higher the income of the couple, the more likely they planned to have a second baby.

Other factors raising the likelihood of having a second child were a high level of marital satisfaction on the part of the wife and a good relationship between the spouses. [KBS Global]

You can read more at the link.

According to the below article an increasing amount of young Koreans are trying to leave the country.  It was interesting to learn that many of these young Koreans were very concerned about how European countries namely Germany accepting Syrian refugees would impact their own immigration plans.  My advice to anyone thinking of leaving Korea is to understand that the grass is not always greener on the other side:

There are young people all over the country who have already made their “South Korean escape,” at least in spirit, though they may not be ready to leave just yet. There are quite a few groups of people raising funds to immigrate or learning how immigration works. On a website called Hell Korea (hellkorea.com), various individuals have posted tips about getting out of the country on the site’s “Escape Korea” message board. Some typical posts are “The Pros of American Citizenship” and “How to Immigrate to Canada as a Skilled Worker.” One netizen who succeeded at immigrating to Canada as a skilled worker shared [his] experience. “I was working at a web agency, which is regarded as the absolute worst place to be in the IT industry. You wouldn’t believe the exhaustion I was dealing with because of my long working hours. I decided to get a work visa as a welder in Canada, because of the educational and medical benefits there, and I spent about six years being trained and gaining experience,” [he] wrote.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.

Horse-meat lovers nationwide will soon be able to enjoy Jeju 'malgogi'#Jeju #Horse #Meat https://t.co/0DU631A098

— The Jeju Weekly (@JejuWeekly) December 30, 2015

Something to think about the next time you decide to buy seafood:

Radioactive material was discovered at detectable levels in domestic and Russian seafood products, a recent study confirms.The news comes amid growing concerns about radiation contamination in seafood products entering the country since the 2011 disaster at Japan’s Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. In response, environmental groups are calling for more intensive inspections of seafood for radioactivity.The findings were announced on Dec. 23 after a study by three groups: the Institute for Environment & Community Development Studies (IECDS), the Korea Radiation Watch Center, and the Gwangju chapter of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement.

Analysis of 150 samples of mackerel, pollock, cod, kelp, and sea mustard taken from discount stores and markets in Seoul, Busan, and Gwangju between March and November showed the presence of radioactive cesium-137 in eight of them, or 5.3%.Cesium-137 is considered one of the chief examples of a radioactive isotope detected in the process of artificial nuclear fission, with an acceptable standard of 100 becquerels per kilogram.The isotope was found in samples of pollock and cod from Russia and domestic mackerel and kelp at levels of 0.37 to 1.09 becquerels per kilogram.The highest rate of detection was for Russian cod at 13%, followed by Russian pollock at 11.5%, Korean kelp at 7.7%, and Korean mackerel at 3.3%.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.

This just goes to show there are many more refugees out there that are not from Syria that need help:

When Kh Too landed on domestic soil Wednesday at Incheon International Airport, one of his first messages to local media was as modest as wishing to “be ordinary.”

For a man who fled Myanmar in 1993 and had spent the past two decades living in a refugee camp, it was perhaps the best he could possibly hope for.

The 43-year-old arrived in Korea in the morning with his wife, five children and a niece as part of the first group of refugees to be resettled here through an initiative led by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“I feel alive. I deeply thank Korea for inviting us, and for embracing us,” said Kh Too, who only goes by one name, as he took his first step as an F-2 visa holder.

For the next six to 12 months, he and his family will be under care of the Korea Immigration Service and receive job training and Korean-language courses.

Korea on Wednesday became the 29th country in the world and second in Asia after Japan to accept refugees through the Refugee Act, which stipulates that the government accept refugees recommended through the program led by the UNHCR.

The Justice Ministry said in April that it would accommodate 30 refugees annually in the next three years as part of a pilot program.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

More Koreans Spend Christmas Alone – https://t.co/hB6hCkklKm

— Korea Noodles (@Korea_Noodles) December 24, 2015

Here is another example of South Korea’s laws that can be used to restrict free speech:

Lee Ha gets two year suspended sentence over poster that satirized former President Chun Doo-hwan

The Supreme Court said on Dec. 11 that it was upholding a court ruling issuing a suspended 100,000-won (US$85) fine to an artist accused of violating the Minor Offenses Act by putting up wall posters satirizing former President Chun Doo-hwan.

The sentence suspension system allows those accused of minor infractions to avoid punishment if two years pass without a sentence.Political pop artist Lee Ha (real name Lee Byeong-ha), 47, was indicted for putting up 55 of the posters in the area around Chun’s residence in the Yeonhui neighborhood of Seoul early on the morning of May 17, 2012, the eve of the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju Democratization Movement. The images showed Chun dressed in prison clothes and handcuffs and carrying a check for 290,000 won (US$250), which was all the money he said he had at time, despite his corruption while president from 1980-88.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read the rest at the link.