A record-high number of foreigners received medical services at hospitals and clinics in Gangnam last year, the district office said Thursday. The Gangnam-gu Office said 185,559 foreign nationals visited the district for medical services in 2023, which accounted for 30.6 percent of all 605,768 foreign patients in South Korea. The number of foreign patients in Gangnam tripled from the year before, marking an all-time high. Gangnam-gu is one of the three districts in the affluent Gangnam region

Social Affairs June 8, 2024

A 16-year-old high school student received a certificate of appreciation from local police Wednesday for alerting his neighbors and helping them escape during a fire earlier this month. Kim Min-jun, in his second year of Gwangdong High School in Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, was commended by the Namyangju Bukbu Police Station for his contribution during the June 1 fire at an apartment complex in the town of Jinjeob-eup. When the fire broke out at around 9:25 p.m. at a second floor unit, Kim -- a

People June 6, 2024

Education authorities at North Jeolla Province said it has filed charges against the parent of a third-grader, who recently made headlines by physically assaulting and shouting profanity at the vice principal of his school. According to the Jeonbuk State Office of Education, officials have filed a report on the boy's mother as a possible case of child abuse by neglect. The mother had been told by the school multiple times that the boy urgently needed behavioral treatment, but she chose to i

Social Affairs June 6, 2024

A local YouTuber's quest to reveal the identities of 44 men responsible for a 2004 Miryang gang rape case has faced opposition from a local women's rights group, which disclosed late Wednesday that the YouTuber never got the consent of the crime's principal victim. The Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center said in a press release that the YouTuber's claim to have "communicated with the victim's family via mail, and agreed to reveal (identity) of all 44" is not

Social Affairs June 6, 2024

The Miryang gang rape case of 2004 is widely remembered as one of the worst sex crime cases in South Korean history, sparking nationwide furor for not only its brutality, but also for victim blaming by the local community and what has been seen as a lack of proper punishment for those responsible. Forty-four high school boys in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, were found to have taken part in the brutal physical and sexual assault of multiple underage victims over the course of a year. The

Social Affairs June 5, 2024

A South Korean court on Wednesday ruled in favor of a man in his 40s who had challenged a recent decision by the government not to acknowledge him as having an intellectual disability. In the recent administrative litigation, the Incheon District Court ruled that the man should be considered to have an IQ of 65, as he claims. The plaintiff in 2021 applied to be registered as disabled with the Incheon Metropolitan Government, but the city declined his request, based on an examination by the Natio

Social Affairs June 5, 2024

A 46-year-old man who filed 112 fake reports to the police in the span of about 10 months was sentenced to 10 months in prison, Jeonju District Court said Wednesday. The defendant filed the fake reports between November of 2022 and September of 2023, falsely claiming that he killed a man, or that he stabbed an acquaintance with a knife. An appellate court of the case found the defendant guilty of obstruction of performance of official duties by fraudulent means, stipulated by Article 137 of the

Social Affairs June 5, 2024

A police officer was recently suspended after she illegally obtained the address of a popular trot singer and went to his home, local media outlets reported Wednesday, The Chungnam Provincial Police Agency officer in her 30s obtained the singer's address through an internal police database without permission from her supervisor in April. The singer was startled by her unannounced visit and reported her to the police. The police confirmed the officer had accessed the singer's address fo

Social Affairs June 5, 2024

The number of female local government employees surpassed that of their male counterparts for the first time ever in 2023, data showed Tuesday, but higher-ranked civil servants were still mostly men. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety released data on those working in the government bodies of metropolitan and provincial regions or districts, which showed that 157,935 civil servants were women as of late 2023. This figure accounts for 50.4 percent of the total 313,296 workers in local govern

Social Affairs June 4, 2024

South Korean police on Tuesday said that a young unmarried couple have been arrested on suspicion of illegal adoption of a child, neglect leading to the death of the child and burial without proper procedures. Dongbu Police Station in Daegu requested the indictment of a male suspect in his 20s and a female suspect in her 30s on charges of child abuse resulting in death and abandonment of a dead body. Abusing a child to death, even with no intent to kill, is punishable between five years and a li

Social Affairs June 4, 2024

Around 20 cows escaped from a farm in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang Province in the middle of the night, wandering around on a nearby road for over an hour, before rescue authorities captured and returned them to the farm's owner early Tuesday. According to the Gyeongsang Fire Service Headquarters, the cows broke out of their barn at around 1:20 a.m. Tuesday. Several eyewitnesses filmed the animals walking around the road in a herd. Authorities said no accidents were reported as a result of th

Social Affairs June 4, 2024

The South Korean police on Monday said it has recommended two members of a church choir to be indicted for their alleged part in last month's death of a 17-year-old girl. The two suspects, the 52-year-old leader of the choir in an Incheon church and a 41-year-old member, are being accused of child abuse resulting in death, stipulated in the Article 4 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, Etc. of Child Abuse Crimes. The crime is punishable by at least five years in prison, u

Social Affairs June 3, 2024

A 37-year-old man has been indicted for attempted murder of two foreign residents in Incheon, local prosecutors said Monday. The suspect is believed to have stabbed the victims in their 40s in the town of Hambak Maeul in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, at around 4:40 a.m. on May 19, according to the Incheon District Prosecutors' Office. He also had attempted to stab two other foreigners who he met earlier, but they managed to escape. The stabbing victims received medical treatment and reportedly did no

Social Affairs June 3, 2024

A Seoul-based North Korean defectors' group on Monday said it would send more leaflets and digital copies of popular South Korean songs across the border in a growing cross-border tit-for-tat that most recently saw Pyongyang send balloons loaded with waste to the South. North Korea sent hundreds of balloons last week, threatening to send more if balloons carrying South Korean leaflets entered its territory again. The civic group Fighters for a Free North Korea revealed its plans to respon

North Korea June 3, 2024

Two South Korean police officers have been suspended after a civilian they had been interrogating suffered a major spinal injury, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down, local police officials said Monday. The victim, in his 50s, had been undergoing questioning at Asan Police Station in South Chungcheong Province at 1:30 a.m. on May 11, when he suddenly stood up from his seat and leaned his upper body forward. One of the police officers grabbed him from behind and pulled him back, and the vic

Social Affairs June 3, 2024