SATELLITE LAUNCH PRIDE OF NATION.GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN SOUTH KOREA
Satellite Launch- Happy Event of the Nation
The successful launch of the artificial satellite “Gwangmyongsong 2” by Songun Korea overfilled the national pride in the minds of the south Korean people.
South Korean media organs are vying with each other to report on the satellite launch of the DPRK.
They extolled that the successful satellite launch squarely showcased the daily growing might of the DPRK under such headlines as “North Korea consolidating its position as the 10th satellite launcher country”, “the successful launch of the satellite by the north is of great political import” and the like.
They analyzed that the satellite launch meted out a sledgehammer to the US, Japan, south Korea and other challenging forces, and it was a strong message to the hostile forces who tried to take initiatives over the issue of the Korean Peninsula.
They estimated in particular that the successful satellite launch of the DPRK brought about a realistic springboard for a jumping at one go in building an economic power.
The media praised it as “a proved science and technology of the north, a lever for jumping at one stroke” saying that the DPRK verified through the satellite launch the efficacy of the self-reliance based on the science and technology. And they reported that north Korea is determined to achieve the high eminence of building a thriving nation in 2012 without fail by giving precedence to developing science and technology and promoting light industry and agriculture.
Meanwhile, the south Korean people from different social standings are actively struggling against the moves of the US and the pro-US conservative regime in south Korea to strangle north Korea, finding fault with its satellite launch.
Civic organizations including the People for Peace and Reunification, the South Headquarters of the National Alliance for the Country’s Reunification and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions held the 115th anti-US solidarity rally in front of the US embassy in Seoul on April 14 to declare that the north’s satellite launch is an exercise of the right of an sovereign state for the peaceful use of the outer space and is never a matter to be discussed at the UNSC by the US and its followers.
Representatives of the Solidarity for Progress in South Korea, the Democratic Labor Party and the Solidarity for Implementing the South-North Joint Declaration called a joint press conference on April 15 in front of the building of the puppet ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade demanding the stop of the anti-DPRK moves of traitor Lee Myong-bak and staged a strike.
The civic and pro-reunification movement organizations branded full participation in the “WMD Proliferation Security Initiative” pursued by traitor Lee Myong-bak as a criminal act that triggers military clashes on the Korean Peninsula and drives the inter-Korean relations into a total catastrophe, and strongly urged to drop it right now.
Reality of the Gap between the Rich and the Poor in South Korea
These days the gap between the rich and the poor in south Korea has further aggravated day by day due to the unpopular policy of the Lee Myong-bak group and the catastrophic economic crisis, causing a severe social problem.
- Income
In 1997 there were 10 social brackets divided in accordance with their income level where the income of the richest was 5.7 times more than that of the poorest, but now it rose to 14.5 times.
At present there are 3.17 million people including one million officially registered jobless men who are seeking job roaming over the street, and over 8 million part-timers and over 6 million independent businessmen who eke out amid the worries of being fired or bankrupted any time with the income less than half the average wage of regular employees.
- Housing
Now the homeless families in south Korea are numbered no less than 7 million (45% of the total) and 680,000 of them live an inhuman life in hovels, shacks and dugouts with no money to pay rent.
Those who rove over the streets without even such huts are increasing every year and in Seoul alone they are numbered more than 3,000.
On the contrary, 1.05 million households which are less than 6.6% of the total own more than 5 luxury houses on average.
The price of a super-luxury apartment house with the 170m2 floor space, allegedly the smallest, in Samsong Dong, Gangnam District in Seoul, for example, costs more than US$ 3 million which are tantamount to the wages accumulated by an ordinary worker for 100 years consuming nothing.
A member of the “Public Health and Welfare Committee” in the south Korean “National Assembly” published on April 9, 2009 a data indicating that the number of the homeless had drastically increased in 2008 just after the Lee Myong-bak regime set out. He further explained; “the number of the vagrants is the largest ever. It is turned out that 94% of them are handicapped, psychopathic patients, senile patients so that their health condition is in severe danger.”
According to the data of the Ministry of Welfare as of February 2009 the number of the vagrants increased to 14,288 in 2008.
- Education
At present it costs more than US$ 115,000 for education from kindergarten to high school graduation in south Korea.
The annual enrollment fees were US$ 5,000 in government-run universities and US$ 8,300 in private ones on average last year which means 20% increase more than that of previous year to arouse big rage and indignation among students’ parents.
Children of rich families receive extracurricular studies at special schools spending over US$ 500 every month whereas 1.2 million poor children are doing piecework on the street not affording the schooling.
- Medical care
Now in south Korea it costs US$ 100~400 for a comprehensive medical checkup and US$ 8~9 on average a day for hospitalization or US$ 100~300 in big hospitals in Seoul and other big cities.
While the rich spend millions of dollars for medical treatment abroad, the grass roots cannot afford the medical treatment in time so that various diseases are rampant; the number of meningitis patients has increased more than twice since traitor Lee Myong-bak came to office.
In particular, 101 of 100,000 people at 20s, 284 of 100,000 at over 70s are tuberculosis patients making south Korea stigmatized as a “country coughing in tuberculosis”.
Suicides are on steady increase every year due to the ever-expanding gap between the rich and the poor in south Korea so it was branded worldwide as a “country of suicide”.
The south Korean people from different social strata are now turning out to overthrow the Lee Myong-bak regime which further aggravates the ruinous social bipolarity by pursuing “pro-conglomerate policy”, lamenting the ever expanding gap between the rich and the poor.