Seoul Metropolitan Government is sending more officials overseas under the mayor’s pledge to expand overseas training of civil servantsOfficials said Monday that the city government plans to send about 780 officials abroad for the maximum two weeks of training from May to December, this year. Last year, 350 officials were dispatched to overseas training courses.The budget for overseas trainings of up to two weeks increased 52 percent from last year’s 1.3 billion won to 2.7 billion won to 2.7 bil

The Seoul Metropolitan Government will provide field trips to foreign visitors to the capital to increase their understanding of Korean culture and promote the city, officials said Thursday. The city government plans to offer 1,000 foreign visitors this year a chance to experience Korean culture during their stay in the capital. The program was launched in 2008 to promote the city to foreign visitors. City officials say that this year the program is designed to publicize the 2012 Yeosu Expo from

Mongolian teachers will teach South Korean students and help provincial communities improve their understanding of multicultural families under a teacher-exchange program.The Korean Education Ministry said Thursday that 20 teachers would be assigned to nine local elementary or middle schools with a concentration of multiethnic students including Mongolian children.They will spend two months from April 23 mostly at schools in Mongolian communities in Gangwon Province. They are to teach English or

The recent murder in Suwon has brought the 112 emergency service under fire, as police failed to find a 28-year-old woman for 13 hours after she called for a help. She was brutally murdered on April 1 despite calling with a specific location hours earlier. The case has prompted an outpouring of criticism of the 112 emergency hotline’s tracking ability and lack of a detailed search manual. Under the current location information protection law, the 112 hotline is not allowed to track a caller’s lo

Some 86 percent of 3-year-olds across the country have been inoculated with all the state-recommended vaccinations, the nation’s disease control agency said on Monday.That proportion is short of the national target of 95 percent, it added.According to a report on the vaccination rate, compiled by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time, 86.3 percent of 3 year olds were found to have received all seven vaccines recommended to be given before they are 2 years old. T

Eating too much salt can increase the risk of obesity, especially for teenagers, a government study found on Tuesday. According to a joint study by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, teenagers in the top 20 percent in terms of salt intake are 1.77 times more likely to be overweight than those in the bottom 20 percent. For adults, the top 20 percent are 1.2 times more at risk of becoming overweight than the bottom 20 percent. “The relationship between salt i

Teachers’ group attributes violations to ordinance for greater student rightsMore teachers are being insulted or beaten by students or parents while on their student conduct duties, a report found Sunday. According to the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Association, a conservative teachers’ group, cases that involve infringement upon teachers’ responsibilities and rights have increased 12-fold from 22 cases in 1991 to 287 in 2011. The report was based on reports to the teacher’s group over the la

The Education Ministry is considering renaming its English test for students and adults.An official told The Korea Herald that the ministry is searching separate names for the two versions of the National English Ability Test currently being trialed. “The word ‘National’ doesn’t fit in our long-term plan to export the testing tool to other countries where English is not spoken as the mother tongue,” he said, adding that the ministry plans to export the adult version of NEAT. NEAT is being develo

The Korean government is stepping up school education on Dokdo, about a week after the Japanese government approved high school textbooks that claim the easternmost islets as Japanese territory.Seoul’s education ministry said it distributed supplementary textbooks on Dokdo to all elementary, middle and high schools to be used during the designated classes on the islets in the new semester which began in March. “The education on Dokdo is to raise students’ awareness of the necessity for guarding