Last week, a pregnant woman gave birth inside an ambulance. The disheartening incident came as four hospitals had refused her, citing a lack of medical staff or beds in their emergency rooms, according to rescue officials in North Chungcheong Province. It is widely feared that such dire situations involving patients in emergency and critical conditions may occur across the nation more frequently unless the government tackles the escalating medical service disruptions started by its plan to incre

In June, the Financial Services Commission announced that the tougher rules on household loans would be applied from September, instead of July -- a sudden schedule change that was feared to send wrong signals to the markets. South Korea’s top financial regulator intended to guide the real estate project financing market to a soft landing by delaying the implementation of the second phase for the stress debt service ratio, or DSR -- a tool that serves as a ceiling on aggregate lending. As

In March, South Korean consumers were taken aback at sky-high apple prices. Apples, popular among Koreans, topped the list of fruit the prices of which had surged from a year earlier. Apple prices had risen 88.2 percent, the steepest since 1980 when related data began to be compiled. This price spike was caused by decreased apple production affected by abnormal weather. North Gyeongsang Province is traditionally famous for apples, and the Jeolla Provinces for pears, another Korean favorite fruit