Over 270,000 people are to travel overseas during the three-day Lunar New Year holiday, hitting a record high since Incheon International Airport opened in 2001, airport officials said Thursday. According to the airport, 272,796 passengers are scheduled to leave the country between Jan. 20 and 25. This is an 8.7 percent increase from last year’s 251,047.“Families traveling overseas during the traditional holiday season is a new trend. We will do our best to make travel convenient during the holi

Expanding preventive education program to parents working at private companiesThe Education Ministry announced Wednesday that it would conduct a nationwide school violence survey of all students from fourth grade in elementary school up to high school seniors.The survey will ask about 5.58 million students across the country about the forms of school violence they have experienced during the past year, places where it took place, whether there are school gangs and other various questions.“The mi

Primary school students believe reports make their problems worseOne out of four of Seoul’s fourth through sixth graders in elementary school has experienced bullying, but half of the victims haven’t sought help, a children’s organization poll showed Tuesday. ChildFund, an international child sponsorship group, found that 25 percent of elementary school students in Seoul between the fourth and sixth grades have encountered bullying in school. The poll of 1,377 fourth through sixth graders from S

A prominent U.S. scholar in second-language education has proposed a method of learning English which emphasizes reading, running counter of traditional way based on grammar. “There has been a lot of suffering in English class when you were learning a foreign language, and it was unnecessary,” said Stephen Krashen, emeritus professor of education at the University of Southern California. He remarked at a lecture to Korean parents on optimal English education in Seoul on Monday that easy language

Seoul’s 24-hour medical service call center was dialed 436,025 times by citizens and 6,241 times by foreign residents last year ― up about 17 percent from the previous year.“We will continue to make sure our citizens and foreign residents receive fast, kind and appropriate medical services from our professional doctors, nurses and urgent medical staff,” said Mo Hyun-hee, director of health policy. About 92 percent of citizens said they are satisfied with the service, up by 32 percent from the pr

Lee urges preventive education, active responses; vows to step up college reformsThe start of 2012 was hectic for Education Minister Lee Ju-ho, after a spate of student suicides widely blamed on school bullying.Determined to root out recurrent school violence, Lee pledged to make sweeping changes to how schools and society deal with it. For the past few weeks, he has been busy collecting ideas and suggestions from students, teachers, parents and experts.Saying school violence was related to dive

Lee urges preventive education, active response; vows to step up college reformsThe start of 2012 was hectic for Education Minister Lee Ju-ho, after a spate of student suicides widely blamed on school bullying.Determined to root out recurrent school violence, Lee pledged to make sweeping changes to how schools and society deal with it. For the past few weeks, he has been busy collecting ideas and suggestions from students, teachers, parents and experts.Saying school violence was related to diver

The government and the ruling party agreed to open a school violence hotline as one major step to responding to school violence, Education Ministry officials said Wednesday. A high-level meeting of Grand National Party members and ministers of related agencies agreed to unify separate school violence hotlines into “117,” which will be operational 24 hours a day nationwide. “As we remember 112 as a number for reporting crimes, and 119 for fire reports, we decided to make 117 a number with which p

Korean students will be able to use digital tools such as calculators and computers in math class from 2014 under the government plan to strengthen the real-life application of mathematics, Education Ministry officials said Tuesday. The ministry will also oversee the math curriculum of middle and high schools to see if they follow the regular public curriculum in an attempt to curb excessive spending on private tutoring, according to officials. Currently, Korean students are not allowed to use c

As a Russian Mars probe that stalled in orbit may fall to the Earth sometime next week, the government announced Tuesday that it would broadcast its location real time on the websites of related agencies and via Twitter until its crash.The 13.2-ton probe named Phobos-Grunt, launched last November, was scheduled to explore the Martian moon Phobos, but became stuck in orbit when its rocket boosters failed, and computer malfunctioned, according to the Russian space agency Roscosmos. It is expected

Likely to have a hard time mixing with peers due to language, appearanceStudents from multicultural families are at a higher risk of being bullied at school as they are likely to have a hard time mingling with their peers due to language problems and racial discrimination. Four out of five foreign teenagers in Seoul are out of school largely because of discrimination and bullying, coupled with study problems, according to a recent city survey. It hasn’t been long since the government started to

Likely to have a hard time mixing with peers due to language, appearanceStudents from multicultural families are at a higher risk of being bullied at school as they are likely to have a hard time mingling with their peers due to language problems and their different appearances.An 11-year-old boy born to a Bangladeshi father and a Korean mother was beaten by his classmates who reportedly hated him for no reason, a local media outlet said. He had been so abused until recently that he suffers from

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon proposed a two-year city plan that focuses on welfare, economic harmony, jobs for young people and sustainable development of the capital. Park revealed his plan on Monday under the new vision entitled “the city created and enjoyed by citizens together” and announced a set of about 285 projects for welfare, economy, culture, sustainable development and citizen’s rights. The city plans to invest about 25 trillion won ($21 billion) in the new plan through the end of his t

Chiefs of four major government organizations in Seoul agreed to launch a permanent consultative committee on Friday as part of recent government efforts to weed out school violence. The anti-school violence efforts come after a string of suicides by school bullying victims that began last month. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, chairman of Seoul Metropolitan Council Hu Kwang-tai, acting superintendent of the city’s education office Lee Dae-young and commissioner of the police agency of the capital Le

A student accused of beating a 14-year-old boy who later committed suicide in the southwestern city of Gwangju last month is expected to face legal action, as the police have decided to take tougher measures against school violence. The boy is believed to have killed himself after being brutally bullied by his peers.The Gwangju Police said that they will issue an arrest warrant for a 15-year-old middle school student on charges of assaulting the victim and other students and taking money from th

Conservatives, progressives clash over controversial ordinance againThe recent school violence cases have sparked controversy again over the student rights ordinance passed in December, which bans corporal punishment and scraps some aspects of the student dress code.Conservative and progressive teachers have clashed over some issues in the ordinance applicable to all elementary and secondary schools in Seoul, including respect of students’ sexual orientation, pregnancy and childbirth, religion a

Non-Korean speakers will now be able to know what is going on when they hear air raid sirens in the middle of the day in Seoul. The Seoul Metro said Wednesday they would announce the civil defense and other drills for terrorism, subway accidents, blackouts and fires in multiple languages including English, Chinese and Japanese, so that foreigners in the capital will know what’s happening around them and what they should do. “The number of foreign visitors to Korea now reaches about 10 million (a

The Education and Science Ministry announced Wednesday they are inviting foreign scientists to take part in the research projects of local colleges, research centers and companies. The annual invitation program is offers them a chance to join local research projects. Foreign scientists and Korean scientists working overseas who have more than five years of experience or outstanding achievements are eligible to apply.The fields open for application are pure science, mechanical engineering, materi

Experts call for long-term measures involving the whole of societyMeasures to deal with school violence have mostly been ineffective and short-sighted, the head of an anti-bullying group has said. Recent school bullying-related suicides have attracted media attention and the government has once again proposed a set of measures and held a series of high-level and school-level meetings to devise new ways to prevent bullying. But Kim Gun-chan, director of the School Violence Prevention Center, a ci

Experts call for long-term effective measures involving the whole societySchool violence has drawn more attention every time school bullying cases are reported, prompting the government to come up with measures to resolve these problems. But experts say the measures have proven mostly ineffective and short-sighted. School violence incidents occur incessantly, leaving deep scars on the school community and society at large.Recently, the government has once again proposed a set of measures after a