DainK

[] Week 2 __Many more people dying from suicide than H1N1__

Poeple in Korea highly concern about H1N1 death rate more than the suicide rate while, in Korea, suicide was the fourth-highest cause of death last year, after cancer, cerebrovascular disease and heart disease. Korea was average 10 years ago. But now the number has been doubled, and Korea's suicide rate stood at 26 per 10,000 last year, the highest among the industrialized countries and more than twice the average. Experts assume that through its drive toward modernization and industrialization, Korea has transformed itself into a fiercely competitive society where the pressure to succeed is intense and values such as family and tradition is fading. This led people to face with its consequences such as mental illness or psychological stress while there are only few measures taken to help them. Korean people used to be easygoing and they never hurried. But, along with such a quick social transformation into highly competitive society accelerates Korea's sucidal rate. I think we should take a lesson from this article that we could take a step a little slower.

[] Week 3 __Korea’s gap in education related spending widens__

Korea's gap in education-related outlays between haves and have-nots widened as families with lower income started to cut back on spending to cope with unsettling economy. This should be a sentitive topic for Korea since korea is the most competitive on educations. Recently, it was known for the country with the highest outlays used for the education. Since 2001 when the data was first compiled, the overall gain in education spending is the lowest tallied. However the country's strong emphasis on education never seems to coold down. Nominal education related expenditures have usually grown 8-10 percent annually. Such gains were curtailed, however, coming into 2009 as the South Korean economy was hit hard by the global economic slump triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year. Reflecting the gap in education-related spending, the country's upper 20 percent spent 22.6 percent more on-year on book purchases in the April-June period, while lower income earners cut back on book-buying by 14.1 percent. Meanwhile, the wealthier consumers spent more money on personal accessaries, and the gap in spedning on personal accessaries expanded a lot as well.

[] Week 4

G20 leaders seal $1tn global dealThe twenty leaders of the world's largest economies made an adreement to triple th monetary funds they had in the World Bank. It is called IMF, which stands for International Monetary Funds, and it is to help the countries which are having a difficult time with the Economic Crisis. US Preseident strongly said this can bring a "turning point" of the Economy Crisis and lead to economic recovery. But, in order to do this, they need to have tougher global financial regulations which means that there are going to be more strict rules for the countries that loan the money to pay back. Korea was one of those countries that had loan from IMF after the Korean War, and was greatly hit by IMF Crisis. No one would thought that Korea is going to make it through and become independent in decades. To everyone's surprise, Korea paid back the loans and became indepent from the debts in a couple of years. This reflects that there are still hopes for the countries with troubled economies to overcome this crisis.

[] Week 5 __Tax, social security burben rises__

As the population of Korea ages, the burden of healthcare and other welfare programs will continue rising. As a result, the ratio of taxes and social security will be increasing upto 28.1% in 2013. By 2013, the average Korea will likely pay 7.8 million won a year in taxes and social security in spite of the Enonomic Crisis that the world including Korea has just been through last year. Despite of the administrator's efforts to lower taxes, the rise in taxes will not be avoidable. This might cause some problems as well. Koreans are stressed already enough to live in such a competetive country, and many of them will be more pressured to pay in taxes as the taxes they have to pay continue increasing. The government should find a solution to reduce this problem and take a wise action.

[] Week 6 __'Made in China' Now Made in Egypt__ A Chinese textile group set Egypt as a ideal location to produce cut price clothes. Most of the clothes that they produce are labelled "Made in Egypt" instead of "Made in China". This is because Egyptian free zones have almost no restrictions for export all over the world. They still get cheap labour and they also get easy access for export abroad.Nearly 950 Chinese companies set up operations in Egyptian free zones now. This allows them to trade more efficiently and widely, and eventually spread out Chinese market even larger than it already is.