South Korea has so few babies it is offering new parents $10,500

 South Korean parents are being showered with cash, but experts say money alone will not fix the country’s fertility woes.

Ilsan, South Korea – In their apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, Kwon Jang-ho and Cho Nam-hee sat down recently at the kitchen table to work out the monthly budget for their 17-month-old son, Ju-ha.

“Raising a baby in Korea can be affordable if you don’t buy unnecessary stuff and take advantage of government support,” Kwon, who works as a broadcaster with a local radio station, told Al Jazeera, while poring over the numbers.

“In our building, there’s even a local government-sponsored centre where you can borrow things like toys or strollers for free,” added Cho, who is on maternity leave and, like most South Korean women, does not share her husband’s family name.

“Who doesn’t find it useful?” Kwon said. “It’s good that the government provides some support for families who already know they want kids but there are other factors to consider when it comes to tackling the low birth-rate problem.”

With the world’s lowest birth rate, South Korea faces a looming demographic and economic disaster. In 2022, the average number of babies expected per South Korean woman dropped to 0.78, down from the previous record low of 0.81 the previous year.

The replacement rate in developed countries – the number of births needed to keep the population stable – is typically about 2.1.

South Korean couples such as Kwon Jang-ho and Cho Nam-hee can avail of a range of government benefits aimed at supporting young families 

To reverse the trend, South Korea’s central and local governments are scrambling to provide payments and other benefits to anyone who gives birth to a child.

South Korea, which rose from poverty to developed country status in the span of a generation, is not known for its strong social safety – its social spending is among the lowest in the OECD.

But even compared with European countries known for their well-developed social welfare systems, many of which have implemented their own “baby bonuses” in response to low birth rates, South Korea’s schemes are generous and come with few strings attached.

Since 2022, mothers have received cash payments of 2 million won ($1,510) upon the birth of a child, more than in famously socialistic France.

Families receive 700,000 won ($528) in cash per month for infants up to the age of one and 350,000 won ($264) per month for infants under two, with the payments set to rise to 1 million won ($755) and 500,000 won ($377), respectively, in 2024.

A further 200,000 won ($151) per month is provided for children up until elementary school age, with additional payments available for low-income households and single parents.

Other benefits include medical costs for pregnant women, infertility treatment, babysitting services and even dating expenses.

In a district in Busan, South Korea’s second-biggest city, a separate bonus for giving birth three or more times recently increased from 500,000 won ($377) to 10 million won ($7,552). And in the rural southwestern South Jeolla Province, monthly stipends of 600,000 won ($453) per child are provided for seven years – equivalent to 50.4 million won ($38,000).

South Korea has rolled out a wide range of financial incentives to boost the country’s chronically low birth rate 

But whether splashing the cash can in any way alleviate South Korea’s demographic woes is unclear.

Cho Joo-yeon, a 39-year-old Korean language interpreter in Seoul who has been married for 10 years, said having children has never been an option for her and that no amount of government support would change her mind.

“Having a child would be a huge responsibility because the basis would be how my parents raised me, which is a huge standard to live up to,” Cho told Al Jazeera. “I’ve never wanted to be a pregnant person. I’m not going to sacrifice my career for a child.”

Cho’s husband Nam Hyun-woo is a creative director in the advertising industry and the couple treasure their time together despite both leading busy professional lives.

“We like the financial leisure that we have, we don’t have to worry about sending children to expensive schools or thinking about extra savings. We can splurge on ourselves and have that extra luxury,” Cho said.

For many South Koreans, choosing not to marry or have children is simply a matter of preference.

In a survey carried out last year by the Office for Government Policy Coordination, 36.7 percent of 19–34-year-olds expressed no desire to have children.

In Seoul, which has the lowest birth rate among cities and provinces in the country, six out of 10 young adults responded the same way in a survey by the Seoul Foundation of Women & Family.

Among young South Korean women, just 4 percent view marriage and parenthood as essential, with more than half seeing neither as important in their lives, according to survey data from the Korean Association for Social Welfare Studies.

In 2022, there were just 192,000 marriages in South Korea, where births out of wedlock remain rare, an all-time low.

Experts have often pointed to the need to address a complex web of issues keeping families from having children, including a gruelling work culture, sky-high housing and education costs, and gender inequality.

In a survey carried out for the Joongang Ilbo newspaper earlier this year, 27.4 percent of respondents said they believed the burden of childcare costs is the primary reason for low birth rates. Other cited reasons included job insecurity, housing instability and other economic factors.

Some controversial remedies that have been floated by politicians include exempting men with three or more children from compulsory military service and allowing foreign domestic workers to work for less than minimum wage to alleviate the burden of housework.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol recently declared that spending 280 trillion won ($211bn) on the problem over the last 16 years had been a failure and called for “bold and sure measures” to address the crisis.

Nonetheless, the government has doubled down on financial incentives.

Professor Song Da-yeong, a social welfare professor at Incheon National University, said cash allowances were not a long-term solution.

“Child-rearing is not a matter of providing financial support for the first two years of a child’s life,” Song told Al Jazeera. “It is not possible to provide high levels of parental benefits until a child is all grown up.”

Kwon Jang-ho and Cho Nam-hee, who live in Ilsan about 25km (15 miles) north of the South Korean capital, anticipate bigger challenges when their son begins elementary school.

“For people who live in big cities and have high aspirations, the competition increases to send our children to the best schools. You have no choice but to spend money on hagwons,” Cho said, referring to the after-school private academies that many parents enrol their children in from as young as five years old.

In 2022, South Koreans’ spending on private education hit a new record, with total annual spending reaching 26 trillion won ($19.6bn) and almost 80 percent of all students receiving some form of private education.

“There’s always that pressure to be ahead of everyone else,” Kwon said.

Song, the university professor, said the government needs to focus on creating an environment where parents can balance work and childcare, rather than financial support alone.

South Korea has some of the longest work hours among developed countries and is ranked in the Economist’s annual glass-ceiling index as the worst OECD country for women to pursue equal opportunities in the workplace.

“It needs to include policies such as using up all parental leave available, reduced work hours and flexible work arrangements,” Song said, emphasising the need for an environment where women are not “kicked out of the labour market” after giving birth.

Although South Korea’s traditionally patriarchal attitudes are gradually changing, women are often still expected – and in some cases feel obligated – to become full-time mothers after giving birth.

Cho Joo-yeon, the interpreter who plans to remain childless, believes the social structure and perceptions need to be transformed to address South Korea’s rock-bottom birth rate.

“It’s not just one person, one government, or one generation that has to change; it may even be several,” she said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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Germany expels Chad’s ambassador in tit-for-tat move

Germany’s action comes a week after Chad expelled its ambassador from N’djamena for ‘non-respect of diplomatic customs’

Berlin has ordered Chad’s ambassador to Germany to leave the country within 48 hours in response to a similar move by the West African country last week, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

“In response to the unfounded expulsion of our Ambassador to Chad, we today summoned the Chadian Ambassador in Berlin, Mariam Ali Moussa, and called on her to leave Germany within 48 hours. We regret that it had to come to this,” the ministry said in a tweet.

Germany’s ambassador to Chad, Gordon Kricke, was expelled from the country last week. The Chadian communications ministry said that the decision was a result of “non-respect of diplomatic customs”.

Two Chadian government sources said the expulsion was due to Kricke’s critical comments about delayed elections and a court decision allowing interim military leader Mahamat Idriss Deby to run for political office.

“Ambassador Kricke exercised his office in N’Djamena in an exemplary manner & has worked for human rights & the rapid transition to a civilian government in Chad,” the German ministry said.

Military leaders in the Central African country originally promised an 18-month transition to elections when Deby seized power after his father, President Idriss Deby, was killed on the battlefield during a conflict with rebels, ending decades of authoritarian rule.

But last year, the military government extended the timeline by two years, delaying elections until October 2024, sparking protests in which dozens of civilians were killed, and worrying regional powers and the United States who have warned against extending military rule.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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China Records World’s First Human Death From H3N8 Bird Flu – WHO Confirms

 A Chinese woman has become the first person to die from a type of bird flu that is rare in humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, but the strain does not appear to spread between people.

The 56-year-old woman from the southern province of Guangdong was the third person known to have been infected with the H3N8 subtype of avian influenza, the WHO said in a statement late on Tuesday.

All of the cases have been in China, with the first two cases reported last year.
The Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reported the third infection late last month but did not provide details of the woman’s death.

The patient had multiple underlying conditions, said the WHO, and a history of exposure to live poultry.
Sporadic infections in people with bird flu are common in China where avian flu viruses constantly circulate in huge poultry and wild bird populations.

Samples collected from a wet market visited by the woman before she became ill were positive for influenza A(H3), said the WHO, suggesting this may have been the source of infection.
Though rare in people, H3N8 is common in birds in which it causes little to no sign of disease. It has also infected other mammals.

There were no other cases found among close contacts of the infected woman, the WHO said.
“Based on available information, it appears that this virus does not have the ability to spread easily from person to person, and therefore the risk of it spreading among humans at the national, regional, and international levels is considered to be low,” the WHO said in the statement.

Monitoring of all avian influenza viruses is considered important given their ability to evolve and cause a pandemic.

Source: Reuters

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Trump files $500m lawsuit against former lawyer Michael Cohen

 The lawsuit accuses Michael Cohen of breaking a confidentiality agreement and ‘spreading falsehoods’ about the former president.

Donald Trump has sued his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, seeking at least $500m in damages, as the former US president steps up attacks on his one-time loyal “fixer” after Cohen testified before the Manhattan grand jury that indicted Trump.

The lawsuit accused Cohen of breaking a confidentiality agreement he signed as a condition of his employment, violating ethical standards for lawyers and “spreading falsehoods” about Trump “with malicious intent and to wholly self-serving ends”.

The suit, filed in Miami on Wednesday, offered a preview of arguments that are sure to be featured in Trump’s defence against charges that he falsified internal business records to disguise payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of extramarital sexual encounters.

Trump is not specifically suing Cohen over his grand jury testimony in the criminal case, but he cites it in support of an argument that his ex-lawyer sought to profit from his role through the publication of two books, a podcast series and media appearances.

Cohen’s spokesman, lawyer Lanny Davis, said the lawsuit will not deter Cohen’s cooperation with prosecutors.

“Mr Trump appears once again to be using and abusing the judicial system as a form of harassment and intimidation against Michael Cohen,” Davis said. “It appears he is terrified by his looming legal perils and is attempting to send a message to other potential witnesses who are cooperating with prosecutors against him.”

The suit is the latest effort by Trump to use the legal system to go after his political enemies and is another example of the former president turning on a once-loyal aide after their relationship imploded.

It comes as Cohen, who once said he would “do anything” to protect Trump, appears poised to become a star witness against him at a possible criminal trial in New York on the charges unsealed last week. Trump, who is planning to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records. It marked the first time a former US president was charged with a crime.

Prosecutors led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, have said Trump covered up his reimbursement of Cohen for $130,000 in hush money paid before the 2016 elections to porn star Stormy Daniels, who has said she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump denies any such relationship.

Trump’s lawsuit said Cohen wrongfully called Trump “racist” in the disbarred lawyer’s 2020 book, Disloyal, and fabricated conversations with Trump from when he served as his lawyer.

“The timing of Disloyal’s release, just prior to the November 3, 2020 Presidential Election, suggests that (Cohen) intended to improperly disclose (Trump’s) confidences when it would be most lucrative to do so – and while Disloyal would be sure to have the most damaging reputational effect,” the lawsuit said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Ghana becomes first country to approve Oxford’s malaria vaccine

 For years, scientists have been trying to develop vaccines for the disease which kills more than 600,000 people annually – most of them in Africa.

Ghana has become the first country in the world to approve a new malaria vaccine from Oxford University, with children under the age of three in line to benefit, although it is unclear when the rollout will begin.

The mosquito-borne disease kills more than 600,000 people each year, most of them children in Africa, and scientists have been trying for years to develop vaccines.

Childhood vaccines in Africa are typically paid for by international organisations such as Gavi and UNICEF after they have been backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is still assessing the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.

However, Oxford scientist Adrian Hill said Ghana’s drug regulator has approved it for the age group at the highest risk of death from malaria – children aged five months to 36 months. It has a deal with the Serum Institute of India to produce up to 200 million doses a year.

This is the first time a major vaccine has been approved first in an African country before rich nations, Hill said.

It was unusual that a regulatory authority in Africa had reviewed the data quicker than the WHO, he added.

“Particularly since COVID, African regulators have been taking a much more proactive stance, they’ve been saying … we don’t want to be last in the queue,” Hill said.

The first malaria vaccine, Mosquirix from British drugmaker GSK, was endorsed by the WHO last year after decades of work. But a lack of funding and commercial potential thwarted the company’s capacity to produce as many doses as were needed.

But research has found that the effectiveness of GSK’s vaccine is approximately 60 percent, and significantly wanes over time, even with a booster dose.

Oxford’s R21/Matrix-M vaccine, meanwhile, was found to be 77 percent effective at preventing malaria in research published last year – the first time the WHO’s goal of 75 percent had been met.

Ghana, Kenya and Malawi were all involved in the pilot programme for the rollout of Mosquirix, and have begun distributing it more widely in recent months.

Since it began in 2019, 1.2 million children across the three countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and WHO said last month that in the areas where the vaccine has been given, all-cause child mortality has dropped by 10 percent, a sign of its impact.

Mid-stage data from the Oxford vaccine trial involving more than 400 children were published in a medical journal in September.

Vaccine effectiveness was 80 percent in the group that received a higher dose of the immune-boosting adjuvant component of the vaccine, and 70 percent in the lower-dose adjuvant group, at 12 months following the fourth dose.

The doses were administered before peak malaria season in Burkina Faso.

Data from a continuing phase III clinical trial in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali and Tanzania, which has enrolled 4,800 children, is expected to be published in a medical journal in the coming months.

However, late-stage data – which suggests a similar vaccine performance as in the phase II trial – has been shared with regulatory authorities over the last six months, Hill said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Joe Biden calls on Northern Ireland’s leaders to compromise

US president urges a return to power sharing in Belfast on visit to mark 25 years of peace.

US President Joe Biden has called for political compromise in Northern Ireland during a brief visit to promote the benefits of enduring peace and investment in the region.

Biden spent just over half a day in Northern Ireland, where he met British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, before travelling south to the Irish Republic for two and a half days of speeches and meetings with officials and distant relatives.

“It took long, hard years of work to get to this place,” Biden said in a speech at the new Ulster University campus in Belfast on Wednesday, remarking how the city had been transformed since he first travelled there as a young senator.

“Today’s Belfast is the beating heart of Northern Ireland and is poised to drive unprecedented economic opportunity,” he said. “There are scores of major American corporations wanting to come here, wanting to invest.”

Biden said power sharing remained critical to the future of Northern Ireland and an effective devolved government would “draw even greater opportunity in this region”.

“I hope the assembly and the executive will soon be restored. That’s a judgement for you to make, not me, but I hope it happens,” he told an audience that included the leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties, 25 years on from a peace agreement brokered by the US government.

That deal, called the Good Friday Agreement, ended 30 years of sectarian conflict and instituted shared governance between the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the overwhelmingly Catholic nationalists, or republicans, who want it to become part of the Republic of Ireland.

The US president visited at a time when power sharing has broken down and left Northern Ireland without its own government.

Biden said on Tuesday that the priority for his trip was “to keep the peace” in Northern Ireland. He credited people who were willing to “risk boldly for the future” for reaching the agreement, reminding the audience that “peace was not inevitable.”

But senior figures in the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is under pressure to resume local power sharing, were strikingly undiplomatic about the US president.

Sammy Wilson, a DUP member of the UK Parliament in Westminster, branded Biden “anti-British”, accusing the second Catholic US president of having “made his antipathy towards Protestants in particular very well-known”.

Another DUP lawmaker, Nigel Dodds, suggested any mediation efforts would prove futile.

“Pressure from an American administration which is so transparently pro-nationalist constitutes no pressure on us at all,” he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Neil Given, a civil servant who lives in Belfast, welcomed Biden’s visit but said his “expectations are not great” that it would unblock the political deadlock.

“We have prevaricated for well over a year now, and ever since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there have been numerous stoppages of the institutions of Stormont,” he said.

“Whether or not Mr. Biden’s visit can in 24, 48 hours pull people together and perhaps get a message we really do need to get back to government, I don’t know, but hopefully, he can do that,” Given said. “I know there is no more powerful person certainly to be over that can give out that message.”

Devolved government in Belfast is a key plank of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but it collapsed 14 months ago over the DUP’s opposition to post-Brexit trade arrangements in Northern Ireland.

Despite the UK and the European Union agreeing to overhaul them this year, the party is yet to back the new trading terms and allow the restoration of Belfast’s Stormont legislature.

Nonetheless, Biden’s visit marked the “tremendous progress” made since the peace agreement was signed, the White House said.

Biden’s defenders noted that his delegation includes Joe Kennedy III, a scion of the Irish-American Kennedy clan, who was appointed special envoy for economic affairs in Northern Ireland. He will remain in Belfast for several days.

“I think the track record of the president shows that he’s not anti-British,” Amanda Sloat, National Security Council senior director for Europe, told reporters on Wednesday.

“The president has been very actively engaged throughout his career, dating back to when he was a senator, in the peace process in Northern Ireland,” she said.

Fewer than 24 hours after arriving in Northern Ireland, Biden was heading on to Ireland, which he says is “part of my soul”. He plans to pay visits to the hometowns of his 19th-century ancestors.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Dozens raped as migrant workers deported from Angola to DR Congo

Congolese civilians, Angolan forces responsible for abuse of women and children, doctor says, as thousands of undocumented workers expelled.

Women and children have been raped and subjected to other abuses during a mass expulsion of migrant workers from Angola to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a doctor, officials and the United Nations say.

Angola has deported thousands of workers in recent months, according to UN figures, echoing previous purges over the past 12 years, during which abuses also occurred, according to human rights groups and the UN.

The size of the latest expulsion is not yet known, but 12,000 workers have passed through one border crossing near the DRC town of Kamako in the past six months, according to previously unreported figures from the UN’s migration agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Last month, UN staff visited the area and wrote an internal preliminary report on the situation, according to the Reuters news agency.

“Girls and women are arrested wherever they are, without the necessary needs, detained and then separated from their children and husbands, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, sometimes raped,” the report said.

The report, which is yet to be published, did not explicitly identify the perpetrators. A doctor working in the area blamed civilians in the DRC and Angolan security forces.

A spokesperson for Angola’s migration authority, Simão Milagres, said there had been an increase in expulsions in the past few weeks but denied that rapes and other abuses had occurred.

“That’s not true,” he said. “I can guarantee that there isn’t an institutional attitude promoting violence against migrants.”

Workers expelled from Angola push a rented bicycle loaded with their belongings along a dirt road to Tshikapa in the DRC near its border with Angola 

The UN report did not say how many cases of abuse there were. But Victor Mikobi, a doctor who specialises in treating victims of sexual violence at a health centre in Kamako, said local clinics had recorded 122 cases of rape this year, unprecedented levels for the town, he said.

“These are women or girls expelled from Angola, some of them under 10 years old, without any means of subsistence and very vulnerable to this type of violence,” he said. Instances of gang rape have caused medical complications, he said.

Based on accounts from patients treated at his health centre, he estimated that at least 14 rapes were committed by Angolan security forces. Dozens of others were committed by civilians in the DRC, he said.

A DRC immigration official who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said that in meetings, officials had talked about dozens of rapes on both sides of the border.

Dieudonne Pieme Tutokot, governor of the Kasai region in southern DRC, said he was aware of rapes and had opened an investigation.

Angola’s diamond-rich Lunda Norde region has long attracted thousands of migrant workers from the DRC’s isolated, poor south. Many come and work illegally, according to the UN report. Only 20 percent of the deported workers had permits.

Kamako has become an “open-air migrant camp”, the head of the IOM’s mission in the DRC, Fabien Sambussy, told journalists.

Abbé Trudon Keshilemba, president of a group of civil society organisations in Kamako, said: “The Congolese end up occupying whole villages in Angola, and the Angolans feel that they will disappear.”

Milagres said Angola carried out its crackdown on undocumented workers as it sought to promote legal migration through an online visa application process.

Mass deportations from Angola to the DRC happen every few years. The largest, in 2018, led to the expulsion of 330,000 workers. Over the course of two months in 2010, the UN estimated that more than 650 people had suffered sexual violence during expulsions from Angola.

“We are witnessing this without being able to do anything due to a lack of resources,” the DRC immigration officer said.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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