SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s medical community is escalating its confrontation with the Lee Jae-myung administration and the National Assembly over a set of health-care policy proposals that physicians argue threaten patient safety and undermine established medical standards. At the center of the dispute are three initiatives: mandatory ingredient-based prescriptions, stricter oversight of [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – The amount of so-called club drugs seized in South Korea has increased more than sevenfold over the past five years, customs authorities said Tuesday. A total of 115.9 kilograms of illegal substances, such as marijuana and ketamine, that are commonly used in nightclubs and other entertainment venues were confiscated [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA) on Monday launched a new centralized platform designed to bring unprecedented transparency to financial interactions between pharmaceutical and medical device companies and healthcare professionals. The “Expense Report Management System,” formally opening Nov. 17, is the country’s first unified public database allowing [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — North Korea on Tuesday issued its first official response to last week’s U.S.–South Korea summit, denouncing the joint fact sheet and Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) statement as fresh evidence of what it called Washington and Seoul’s “hostile and confrontational intent.” In a lengthy commentary carried by the Korean Central News [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s long-term unemployment has climbed to its highest level in four years, driven largely by a surge in jobless young adults with university degrees, according to new government data released Sunday. The number of people who searched for work for more than six months but failed to secure a [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea plans to impose stricter disclosure requirements on listed companies’ executive compensation and expand access to shareholder voting information, in a move aimed at improving market transparency and strengthening investor rights, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) announced Sunday. Under the reform package — titled Measures to Improve Corporate Disclosure [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 17 (Korea Bizwire) – Culture Minister Chae Hwi-young has said the government will deploy every measure permitted under law to block plans for ultra-high-rise buildings facing Jongmyo Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site in central Seoul. The project has drawn controversy because Jongmyo, a 14th-century royal ancestral shrine from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Seoul partially suspended operations of its new Hangang bus service on Sunday after a vessel ran aground near Jamsil Pier, prompting the rescue of more than 80 passengers and intensifying political scrutiny over the project’s safety record. The accident occurred at around 8:24 p.m. Saturday, when a river bus [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – Applications for vouchers provided to pregnant women increased 8.1 percent from a year earlier in the first nine months of this year, data showed Sunday, in a possible sign of a continued rebound in the number of newborns in a country facing one of the world’s lowest birth rates. [...]
SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) – Police have apprehended over 3,000 suspects in connection with online sex crimes over the past year, with nearly half of them in their teens, officials said Sunday. The National Police Agency (NPA) has detected 3,411 online sexual abuse cases between November 2024 and October this year, effectively detaining 3,557 [...]