Exotic pets becoming more common feature of nation’s householdsAre you considering “adopting” a pet? Dogs and cats are usually the first to be considered, but a growing number of people are choosing rather unusual animals. Snakes, scorpions, toads, parrots and spiders are rapidly settling in as new pets.Jang Se-won, a 23-year-old salesman, bought a snake as a pet 10 years ago when he and his famil

Social Affairs July 29, 2011

The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs on Friday announced a set of guidelines calling for provincial administrations to accept the reality of climate change and upgrade anti-disaster measures accordingly. Experts say that weather on the Korean peninsula has turned subtropical due to global warming and climate changes. A section of a commuting railway between Seoul and Yeoncheon, Gye

Social Affairs July 29, 2011

Her face told me immediately that something was not right. My mother-in-law is usually cheerful and enthusiastic to greet us when we visit her home for the holidays, but this time her voice was feeble and her face was darkened by a smothered grimace. Then I noticed the limp and her hand bracing her back. “Mother, what happened?” I asked.“Oh, I fell two days ago. I slipped as I stepped down from th

Technology July 28, 2011

LEXINGTON, Kentucky ― Five years ago, Bill Cole weighed 420 pounds, had little strength and less endurance, and generally avoided physical exercise.Cole, 49, is a Lexington real estate consultant. Before that, he taught sociology at the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University.“I was born with some foot problems and had a bunch of surgeries, which kind of gave me an excuse not to be ac

Technology July 28, 2011

DALLAS ― Are kids growing up too fast?Dr. Michelle Fowers says too many are.“I think all the time about kids with grown-up illnesses,” says Fowers, a pediatrician at Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Texas.Societal pressures, poor nutrition, and inadequate or too narrowly focused exercise are causing serious health problems for kids, experts say. These problems include obesity, high blood pressure

Technology July 28, 2011

A malignant tumor in the stomach, gastric cancer, is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Korea. According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, 29,418 people were newly registered as gastric cancer patients in 2010, taking up almost 10 percent of the 218,884 new cancer patients that year.The high prevalence of gastric cancer here is due to Koreans’ diet pattern, said Dr. Lee Ju-ho of E

Technology July 28, 2011

Wary of response from pharmacists, drug firms hesitant to distributeThe sale of over-the-counter drugs in stores without pharmacies, first permitted on Wednesday afternoon, got off to a rocky start. “I wasn’t informed of any drugs to be stored today,” said a part-time worker of a Family Mart, the nation’s largest convenience store franchise, in Gangnam, southern Seoul, on Thursday morning. The sto

Social Affairs July 21, 2011

In this modern era of information, medical information is something that is sought by everyone. This means that, not only are many patients and guardians well informed, they also actively seek information about diseases. However, it is difficult to learn about emergency conditions unless you have been subject to them.   Song Keun-jeongCompared to other diseases, few people know about or understand

Technology July 21, 2011

The sweltering heat after the three-week-long rain spell is bringing sleepless nights to most parts of the nation as the daytime temperature stays well above 33 degrees Celsius and the nighttime temperature remains at above 25 degrees Celsius on average. According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment service, the number of people visiting medical facilities over heatstroke or sunstroke in

Technology July 21, 2011

Choi Sun-hee, a 56-year-old housewife, recently bought the national pension policy, although she was not obliged to. She will be paying around 140,000 won a year for the next 10 years and will start receiving around 250,000 won every month from then. “It is a bank savings program with the highest interest rate, you can say,” she said.Choi admitted that she wasn’t too keen to join the pension progr

Social Affairs July 19, 2011

Korea hosted the International Pension Conference to discuss issues surrounding the world’s most influential investment funds from July 11-13. The forum drew 37 heads of pension services worldwide who manage a total of 3,620 trillion won ($3.4 trillion) worth of assets.Representatives from powerhouses including Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund, Canada’s Canada Pension Plan Investment and

Social Affairs July 19, 2011