Korea Times Politics & City Reporter
Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Three family members sit separately on a train at Seoul Station as they travel to Daegu, Wednesday, a day before the Lunar New Year holidays. As part of social distancing measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, passengers are allowed to sit only at window seats. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
Meal kit products of traditional foods are popular ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls on Feb. 11 to 14, as many people plan to prepare small amounts of food following a ban on large family gatherings to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Korea Times fileBy Bahk Eun-jiIt is a tradition for people to visit their hometowns for the Lunar New Year holiday and cook lots of food to offer ancestral rites and share with relatives.But fear of COVID-19 and the government's ban on gatherings of groups of five or more people have forced many to cancel visits to their hometowns, and this has made people seek smaller amounts of food for their own immediate family and choose easier ways to prepare it while staying at home.Jo Yong-soon, a 58-year-old homemaker living in Guri, Gyeonggi Province, said she didn't invite relatives over for this holiday, but plans to prepare some food for her family.“I usually become so busy two or three days before Lunar New Year or Chuseok as I have to prepare a lot of food for about a dozen relatives. But this time, I will cook two to three kinds of fo
Dogs run around a dog park in World Cup Park in Mapo District, western Seoul, in this Jan. 9, 2020, photo. Korea Times fileBy Bahk Eun-jiThere have been growing calls to protect the welfare of animals as more and more people in Korea opt to live with pets. One of the demands pet owners have been making to local governments is to create off-leash areas where dogs can play freely.To meet their requests, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced a plan last year to build at least one dog park in each of the city's 25 districts by 2022, allocating a budget of 100 million won per district.But the project has been going nowhere due to opposition from residents near the planned sites for the dog parks.Early last November when Dongdaemun District was about to open its first dog park, residents of nearby apartments opposed the opening mainly due to concerns over dogs making noise and excrement issues. Neighbors who live directly around the park complained that their lives would be disrupted by barking dogs and possibly careless owners.“As a mother of two young children, I was worried
A captured image from a surveillance camera shows staff at a public daycare center in Incheon grilling meat to eat while unattended children watch a video on a laptop during operating hours. YonhapBy Bahk Eun-jiParents are calling for heavy punishment for staff at a public daycare center in Incheon, who were booked on charges of abusing children with disabilities.Members of the Incheon Disabled Peoples' Association, the Incheon Differently Abled Federation, the Korean Parents' Network for People with Disabilities and the parents of the children of the daycare center held a press conference in front of the Incheon Seo District Office building, Monday. They called for strong punitive actions and measures to prevent the recurrence of such cases.It was reported earlier that six staff of the daycare center abused 10 children, aged one to six who had disabilities, between November and December last year ― beating them, pulling a girl's hair and dragging her, and leaving them unattended.“Shown in the surveillance camera footage, the acts of abuse by the teachers were unimaginably brut
Migrant workers and human rights activists call for better living conditions for migrant workers during a protest near Cheong Wa Dae, Seoul, Tuesday, following the death last December of a Cambodian woman in a vinyl greenhouse where she and other workers had been living, at a farm in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province. Yonhap
Animal rights activists stage a protest at Gwanghwamun, Seoul, in this Jan. 25 photo, calling for a halt to the culling of poultry as a method to prevent the spread of avian influenza, saying there are other options. YonhapBy Bahk Eun-jiWhile the government has been bolstering measures to prevent the spread of avian influenza, animal welfare organizations and veterinarians are criticizing the measures ― culling poultry regardless of whether or not they have been infected.They say culling is nothing more than animal slaughter, and vaccines for the highly pathogenic H5N8 avian flu should be introduced as a preventive measure. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, the number of chickens and ducks culled here, since last Nov. 26 when the first H5N8 case broke out, topped 25.3 million as of Feb. 3. There were 75 cases of infections nationwide.In Gyeonggi Province alone, more than 6.8 million chicken and ducks in 83 poultry and egg farms were culled during the same period. Of these, 4.24 million at 65 farms, or 61 percent, were culled as a preventive measure alt
Quarantine officials wearing protective clothes guide passengers in the arrivals area of Incheon International Airport, Feb. 3. YonhapBy Bahk Eun-jiThe health authorities are raising the alarm over the growing number of infections here from COVID-19 variants that are believed to be transmitted faster. As domestic transmission of the variants has been confirmed, and the number of people from countries with the variants coming to Korea is growing, experts say vaccination should begin immediately, starting with key groups, including medical workers and the elderly.The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 12 new variant cases, Sunday raising the total of such cases to 51. Of them, 37 people were infected with the variant first detected in the United Kingdom, nine were linked to the South African variant, and five were infected with the Brazil variant. People with the variants did not all come from those three countries but from 18 ― the U.K., Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Nigeria, Hungary, Iraq, France, China, Poland, Syria, Ghana, Tanzania,
National Tax Service's Jamsil branch building / YonhapBy Bahk Eun-jiA 50-year-old man armed with a knife injured three employees of the National Tax Service's Jamsil branch and killed himself after by drinking a poisonous substance, Wednesday.Songpa Police Station in eastern Seoul said Thursday that the man, surnamed Nam, stabbed one female and two male workers with a knife at the branch office around 5 p.m. The victims were immediately taken to a hospital, and are not in critical condition.Nam tried to hurt himself with the weapon right after the attack and drank a poisonous substance. He died while being taken to a hospital. Police said his self-inflicted knife wound was not critical.Police have applied for an autopsy on Nam's body. “We are investigating exactly what the substance was that he drank and are checking other details of the crime,” a police officer said. It has been revealed that the female victim had filed a request for a restraining order with the police against Nam in December, according to police. At the time, police accepted the request and had him wear
Park Jung-jae, center, principal of Shindang Elementary School in Seoul, poses with students and staff at the school in this October 2018 photo. Courtesy of Park Jung-jae By Bahk Eun-jiWhen Shindang Elementary School Principal Park Jung-jae took office in 2017, he decided to provide the students and teachers with opportunities to learn global perspectives and cultural diversity through exchange programs with other schools abroad. His determination came from his experience as the principal of the Korean International School in Singapore from 2014 to 2016, when Park saw many teachers and students there nurture their communication skills with people from around the world through international exchange programs.“I realized that the ability to communicate is highly required for our students who are living in the world of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, so I decided to form a partnership with Huamin Primary School in Singapore,” Park said. Singapore is adopting a projec
People attach a sheet of paper with the Chinese characters “Ipchun daegil,” meaning “good luck for spring,” on the door of a house at the National Fold Museum of Korea in Seoul, Wednesday, the day of Ipchun, one of 24 seasonal divisions, that marks the onset of spring. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul