I don’t know enough about this act to determine whether it is good or bad, what I do know it has created great divisions within South Korea’s health care community:
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| Korean Licensed Practical Nurses Association (KLPNA) President Kwak Ji-yeon, front, is transferred to a hospital from the association’s sit-in protest tent in front of the National Assembly, ending a six-day hunger strike to protest the Nursing Act upon the persuasion of Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong, second from right, Sunday. Courtesy of Ministry of Health and Welfare |
Tension within the country’s medical community is growing as doctors, nursing assistants and various other medical workers announce a joint strike in protest of the recently passed Nursing Act, which they claim privileges nurses unfairly.
Korea Times
Starting Wednesday, a coalition of 13 medical workers’ organizations including the Korea Medical Association (KMA) and the Korean Licensed Practical Nurses Association (KLPNA), both in opposition to the Nursing Act legislation, have decided to go on strike, a KMA official told The Korea Times, Monday.
The coalition will also hold rallies on Tuesday in front of the National Assembly in Seoul and the Incheon office of Rep. Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), to condemn the DPK, which controls more than half of the 300-seat Assembly, for passing the bill. (…..)
The Nursing Act, which aims to improve nurses’ working conditions and clarify the scope of their duties independently from the existing Medical Services Act, has increased clashes within medical circles and among the rival parties regarding its legislation, which was passed at the National Assembly’s plenary session last Thursday. (….)
However, the bill faced fierce opposition from other medical groups including doctors, nursing assistants and paramedics and the ruling People Power Party (PPP), claiming that it favors a certain professional group and will create new conflicts in the health care system.
The Nursing Act contains a provision that broadens the scope of nurses’ responsibilities from medical institutions to community and public health, in response to the ramifications of an aging population.
However, the doctors’ group is concerned that the legislation may enable nurses to intervene in the duties of other medical workers and give privileges to nurses over other medical professionals.
Nursing assistants also claimed they could suffer discrimination in recruitment if the new law comes into effect, as it will put the nursing assistants under the supervision of nurses.
You can read more at the link.
The KCTU did not mind when the Korean left was demanding the prosecution and jailing of former conservative Presidents Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak, but don’t like it when their political leader Lee Jae-myung is being prosecuted. Ironically they are condemning President Yoon for the prosecution when during the last administration he was the chief prosecutor that put President Park in jail which they championed. So what you can take from all this is that they only want conservatives prosecuted:
Members of a major South Korean umbrella union rallied in downtown Seoul on Saturday to condemn the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, jamming traffic in the neighborhood.
Some 13,000 union members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the country’s two major umbrella labor organizations, held multiple rallies in Daehangno, Saejongno and Jongno, in protest against “prosecution-backed dictatorship.”
During the rallies, the protestors said the country’s civil livelihood, democracy and labor fell to the worst conditions under the Yoon administration in less than one year of his presidency.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, what is further hypocritical about the KCTU is that they are calling the Yoon administration a “dictatorship” while their union and the political left has been linked to North Korean spies. North Korea is a real dictatorship which the KCTU says nothing about.
This is a really bad situation and I had no idea that South Korea does so little to return children that are abducted:
On a cold Nov. 30 afternoon, when temperatures nosedived to minus seven degrees Celsius in Seoul, bringing with it the nation’s first cold wave alert of the season, John Sichi was walking on a treadmill in front of Dongdaemun Design Plaza in central Seoul. Undeterred by the biting winds, the U.S. citizen walked for nearly four hours.
Korea Times
Near the treadmill stood a placard reading, “Please let me see my children,” and a life-size cardboard cutout of his two kids ― a 5-year-old boy and 3-year-old girl.
People walking by approached him ― some with curiosity and some with empathy ― to see why a man would be walking on a treadmill in freezing weather. A woman handed him 10,000 won, probably assuming it was a fundraising campaign.
Sichi has been staging the treadmill protest since October in various spots in Seoul, in a desperate effort to find his missing children who have been allegedly abducted by his Korean wife.
His demand is simple: The Korean government should enforce court orders from both the U.S. and Korea that the children should be returned to the U.S.
You can read more at the link.
