Korean doctors are now going to ramp up their use of denying care to patients as leverage against the government:
The monthlong confrontation between the government and doctors was feared to worsen further as medical school professors were to tender mass resignations and cut back on patient care starting this week, while the government was to suspend the licenses of striking trainee doctors, officials said Sunday.
More than 90 percent of the country’s 13,000 trainee doctors have been on strike in the form of mass resignations for about a month to protest the government’s decision to increase the medical school enrollment quota by 2,000 seats from the current 3,058 starting next year to enhance health care services in remote areas, as well as essential but less popular medical disciplines.
Joining the collective action, professors of medical schools nationwide will begin to submit their resignations Monday and will reduce their weekly work hours to 52 hours by adjusting surgeries and other medical treatments, according to the national medical school professors’ council.
Starting April 1, they will also “minimize” medical services for outpatients to focus on seriously ill patients and emergency patient care.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but Korean doctors have to be one of the most selfish groups in South Korea.
I did not even realize the gas station on old Yongsan Garrison was still open:
The gas station at Yongsan, one of the last vestiges of a once-busy headquarters compound, is preparing to turn off its pumps after 32 years of service. The station, on a hill overlooking Seoul, will close May 1 as part of a plan to return sections of the base to the South Korean government, according to an Army and Air Force Exchange Service news release Tuesday. The gas station reported average monthly revenue of $70,000 between 2021 and 2022, AAFES spokesman Chris Ward said in an email Thursday.
The monthly average fell to $50,000 the following year “and has experienced even further significant declines” in 2024, he said. Six of eight pumps still in service sat idle for more than two hours Wednesday afternoon. The only cars in the lot were parked there by drivers who exited the base through a nearby pedestrian gate.
Jerry Chandler, an anti-terrorism program manager at Yongsan and a four-year South Korea resident, said he is disappointed by the station’s looming closure. Chandler — one of the roughly 500 service members, Defense Department civilians and U.S. embassy staff who still live or work at Yongsan — said he and his wife fill up their two cars with premium gas “all the time” at the station.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but I also did not know that about 500 servicemembers and DOD personnel are still working on Yongsan Garrison.
Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
According to the article as Koreans travel more and more people travel to Korea it is causing more opportunities for international couples to meet:
More than 10 percent of marriages in Korea last year were between Koreans and foreign nationals, rising to the highest level in 13 years, according to Statistics Korea, Tuesday.
In its annual report on marriage and divorce, the statistics agency said the number of international marriages totaled 19,700 in 2023, up 18.3 percent from a year earlier.
International marriages accounted for 10.2 percent of 193,700 marriages reported nationwide in 2023 — the highest ratio since 2010 when the figure stood at 10.5 percent.
“The 2023 ratio of international couples among all newlyweds is noteworthy,” a Statistics Korea official said, noting that the ratio had been above 10 percent mostly in the 2000s but remained in the single digit level from 2011 to 2022.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
I wonder if the Russians are helping the North Koreans to develop hypersonic weapons or if this is all just for show to raise tensions?:
North Korea conducts a ground jet test of a solid-fuel engine for a new type of intermediate-range hypersonic missile at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground on March 19, 2024, in this photo carried by the Korean Central News Agency the next day. (Yonhap)
North Korea said Wednesday it has successfully conducted a ground jet test of a solid-fuel engine for a new type of intermediate hypersonic missile amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
Hypersonic missiles are on the list of sophisticated weapons North Korean leader Kim Jong-un vowed to develop during a key party congress in 2021, along with nuclear-powered submarines, spy satellites and solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Hypersonic missiles travel at a speed of at least Mach 5 — five times the speed of sound — and are designed to be maneuverable on unpredictable flight paths and fly at low altitudes. At Mach 5 or higher, such a missile would be able to traverse the 195 kilometers between Pyongyang and Seoul in just one to two minutes.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
