The following is a text version of the address given by Bill Gates to South Korea’s National Assembly on Tuesday, transcribed and loosely edited by The Korea Herald for clarity. -- Ed. It’s a great honor to be here. Thank you Speaker Kim (Jin-pyo) and all the members of the National Assembly for your invitation. During my trip to the Republic of Korea, one highlight is that I’ll sign a memorand...

Bill Gates on Tuesday said he hoped South Korea would take on a larger role in tackling global health threats to match the scale of its economy in a stronger partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he co-chairs. In a meeting with President Yoon Suk-yeol at his office in central Seoul, Gates said that South Korea‘s growing contribution to global health and its capabilities m...

COVID-19 reinfections appear to be rising, and the average time until reinfection is getting shorter. According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention, the number of suspected cases of reinfection in the third week of July recorded 28,966, accounting for 6.5 percent of the cases newly confirmed that week. In the second week of the same month, the share of suspected reinfections was 3.7 perc...

Chaebol bosses -- most notably of Samsung and Lotte -- are being given special presidential pardons and being bailed out of jail in light of the economic crisis triggered by the pandemic. The first round of special pardons by the Yoon Suk-yeol administration was issued in consideration of the “economic fallout from COVID-19 and stagnant recovery, as well as inflation that is associated with the ...

Sohn Mal-nyeon, 77, has been living in her two-room basement unit in Seoul’s southern central Dongjak since her daughter, now 51, was a toddler. Two months ago, her husband moved to a nursing home in Namyangju, about an hour’s drive away, leaving her to live by herself. She said that on the first night of the downpour, the local community service center called and asked her to spend the night th...

Lee Jun-seok, the ruling People Power Party’s exiled leader, on Wednesday asked the court to block the launch of a new party leadership while he is under suspension over sexual bribery allegations. Lee filed for an injunction with a Seoul court on this day to stop the party from moving forward with an interim leadership. The party on Tuesday formed an interim committee of leaders with Rep. Joo H...

A subway line running through the north of Seoul was suspended temporarily early Tuesday evening as rain intensified. The Seoul metropolitan office said nine stops on Line No. 3 from Samsong to Daehwa that travel across Goyang, a city in Gyeonggi Province, had to stop operation for an hour from 5:40 p.m. In northwestern Seoul and other cities in northern Gyeonggi Province, several roads were cl...

South Korean parliament’s speaker Kim Jin-pyo will meet with Bill Gates next week to discuss COVID-19, future threats of pandemics and the importance of international cooperation in responding to them. The parliament office on Tuesday said the meeting between the speaker and the Microsoft founder is scheduled to take place on Aug. 16 for about 40 minutes. Following the meeting Gates will delive...

Hundreds of thousands of commuters on Tuesday trudged through Seoul’s battered roads and public transit pummeled by record-breaking downpour. According to the Seoul metropolitan office, some of the roads along the Han River that cut across the middle of the capital had to be closed for several hours this morning for safety. “Water still covers roads in many places, and they are just not passabl...

President Yoon Suk-yeol is facing backlash for responding to the heavy rain that pounded Seoul from his apartment on Monday after leaving his office earlier that afternoon. Yoon, who became the country’s first commuting president by refusing to move into Cheong Wa Dae, was working from home as the rainfall ravaged Seoul before he showed up at the national emergency headquarters at around 9:30 a....

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, left South Korea on Thursday, but controversy over Seoul’s response to her visit continues. When Pelosi arrived here late Wednesday following her stop in Taiwan, no South Korean delegation was present to greet her at the airport as is custom for a high-level visit. President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was on vacation, did not take time out to...

South Koreans are not letting rising cases of COVID-19 get in the way of their summer plans, with travel and businesses already freed up by current policies. So far in August, an average of 101,290 cases and 31 deaths were reported per day, climbing from the 80,648 cases and 24 deaths seen between July 25-31. Over two days on Friday and Saturday, 92 patients with COVID-19 died -- the highest sin...

South Korea’s National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo and US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday reaffirmed the two countries‘ alliance and will to strengthen cooperation and bring about the denuclearization of North Korea. Pelosi, the first US House speaker to visit Korea in 20 years, arrived in Seoul late Wednesday after a stop in Taiwan. Taiwan and China went noticeably un...

Second booster costs and benefits vs. BA.5 How beneficial would a fourth dose of the original Wuhan vaccine be against BA.5 for people who were breakthrough-infected with BA.1 or BA.2? The KDCA said in reponse to The Korea Herald’s question on July 26 that no analysis has been carried out on that front yet. Park Young-joon, the head of the KDCA’s epidemiological investigation team, said that a...

A growing wave of resignations at the top of the ruling People Power Party is setting the mood for a shake-up of leadership. The looming shift would leave out the party’s embattled chair Lee Jun-seok, who remains in exile over ongoing allegations that he accepted sexual favors and then tried to cover it up. The party called a meeting Monday and reached a “nearly unanimous decision” to transition...