Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has surprised many with his unconventional steps a month into his new job. He has broken with the strict and bureaucratic image of a mayor and gotten more personal and closer to ordinary citizens. Park invited a 39-year-old housewife with three kids to be the first one-day citizen mayor on Wednesday. Sitting on “the chair for citizens” in the mayor’s office, she received daily briefings on city affairs and spent the morning and afternoon with Park’s schedule. Experts sa

A former female prosecutor was found to have used her influence to unfairly help a private-practice lawyer win his case in return for a luxury sedan and a designer handbag, Busan Prosecutors said Wednesday. (Yonhap News)The 36-year-old prosecutor, who resigned from office in a city near Seoul earlie

BUSAN ― The world’s largest forum on aid officially opened in Busan on Tuesday with 3,000 participants from governments, parliaments, international organizations and civic groups.Delegates participating in the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, or HLF-4, assessed the progress made since the 2005 Paris Declaration.“We should never stop in our efforts to explore effective aid. And ultimately we need to find ways to turn aid effectiveness into real development. This is exactly what the B

Global leaders are being urged to increase investment in agriculture in developing countries at the high-level aid forum in Busan this week by a UN agency. According to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, 75 percent of the world’s poorest people ― a total of 1.4 billion― live in rural areas, depending on agriculture for their livelihoods. “About two billion people live and work on the world’s 500 million smallholder farms. Most survive on less than $2 a day,” IFAD Vice President

African governments need to be given greater ability to support development in the region, especially in tough economic times where every dollar counts, said Tony Blair in Busan on Tuesday.Speaking at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, the former British prime minister said assistance needs to help poor countries stand on their own rather than depend on the wealthy. At a panel discussion titled “Taking Charge Not Taking Charity: How Africa Can Lead Its Development,” Blair stressed th

Gender issues to be discussed in Wednesday’s special session with ClintonBUSAN ― Delegates actively participated in thematic sessions and side events on the first day of the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan on Tuesday. One of the major talks addressed how aid ownership and accountability should be made a political priority to ensure partner government executives take full responsibility in implementation of national development strategies.“We should lift this issue to the po

President Lee calls incident threat to democracy, rule of lawThe government and the ruling party vowed stern enforcement of the law on illegal protests on Monday, denouncing the protesters who assaulted a ranking police officer during a rally against the U.S. Free Trade Agreement on Saturday.President Lee Myung-bak called the incident against a uniformed police officer “a threat to democracy” in a meeting with senior secretaries, presidential spokesman Park Jeong-ha said.The chief of Seoul’s Jo

The following article was contributed by Park Dae-won, president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency. ― Ed.In 2005, aid donors and recipient countries gathered in Paris for the Second High Level Forum on aid effectiveness. They endorsed the Paris Declaration, grounded in five implementation principles: ownership, alignment, harmonization, management for results, and mutual accountability. These principles were designed to make aid delivery more effective. Aid stakeholders then sought

The following article was contributed by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kim Sung-hwan. ― Ed.Microsoft founder Bill Gates commended Korea’s transformation from a recipient of aid to a donor as a model case of development cooperation at the G20 Cannes Summit. He further complimented Korea’s pledge to double the volume of its ODA by 2015 amid financial difficulties sweeping the globe. His comment symbolizes the status of Korea and the respect it has gained in the global development cooperat

Oriental medical doctors have blasted the Constitutional Court’s decision to acknowledge the moxibustion practice of legally unauthorized acupuncturist Kim Nam-su.They have vowed to protest the ruling and urged the government to stop non-accredited Oriental doctors from practicing. Their protest came as the Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the prosecution’s indictment of Gudang, the pen name of Kim Nam-su, for illegal practice of Oriental medicine unconstitutional.The 96-year-old acup