Posted on January 4th, 2010
Nobody really knows what will happen in 2010, although Larry Sabato’s Jeanne Dixon-inspired post at Politico comes pretty close. But there are ten stories that will shape the world this year — for better or for worse. Other crises may erupt (I have not, for example, included the long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians on the list), but these ten stories as they develop are most likely going to be the events that determine what kind of year 2010 will be.
10. The New Japan
The Democratic Party of Japan government under Prime Minister Yuko Hatoyama is the first strong non-LDP government in Japan since the MacArthur era. It came to office promising dramatic changes in everything from Japan’s bureaucratically-dominated governing system to U.S.-Japan relations–while getting the economy back on track. Any one of these would be a tough job, and with restive coalition partners and many inexperienced politicians tasting real power for the first time, the government has hit some obstacles. Japan is still the world’s second largest economy and despite its pacifist constitution it remains a top military spender. The success or the failure of the DPJ over the next year may not be as dramatic as political stories in other parts of the world–but it matters a lot. The relationship between the United States and Japan has been the cornerstone of stability in Asia for more than fifty years; let’s see what happens now.
9. The EU After Lisbon
It took almost as long for the EU to get its new non-constitution ratifiied as it took the United States to get from the Declaration of Independence to our own first constitutional president in 1789. Now the Treaty of Lisbon has gone into effect, providing for a unified European foreign service headed by a kind of EU foreign minister and a new EU president (or chair, depending on how the relevant articles are translated into English). Now the Europeans and the rest of us will begin to find out if all this work has made any difference. So far, the signs are not good; European diplomacy was completely ineffective at the Copenhagen summit on climate change–an issue which Europe thought that it owned. Europe now faces some of the most important and frightening issues in its history. Greece today and potentially Spain, Italy and Ireland in the not-so-distant future might threaten the stability of the common European currency. Turkey is increasingly dissatisfied with European resistance to its bid to join the Union. Within Europe, problems with immigrants continue to grow and beyond it events in the Arab world, Russia and Iran could plunge it into crises over which it has little control. In 2010 we will see whether, post-Lisbon, Europe is getting its act together or whether it continues to punch well below its weight in world affairs.
8. Turkey in Transition
Turkey may be the only European country whose geopolitical importance has dramatically grown since the end of the Cold War. In relations between the West and the world of Islam, Turkey can play a crucial mediating role–or it can help bring on the ‘clash of civilizations’ most of us still hope to avoid. Torn between secular, religious and liberal politics, Turkey is undergoing culture wars as bitter as, if not more than, anything we have in the US. Turkish policy and politics make a lot of difference in Iran, Iraq and the Caucasus. Turkey can help or hurt efforts to promote peace between Israel and its neighbors; Turkey has a significant role to play in the changing relationship between Russia and the West. Keep your eyes on Turkey; what happens here will affect a range of important world issues.
7. The Crisis in Global Governance
One lesson from the Copenhagen conference is that the system of global governance is melting down faster than an iceberg in Ecuador. It isn’t just the climate conference; the global trade system is in deep disarray. The WTO has been struggling since the Clinton administration to produce a new global trade agreement: no end is in view. The old institutions and clubs (like NATO and the G-7) don’t have the clout to make their decisions stick; the new ones (like the G-20) still don’t work very well. Banking regulation, public health, immigration, the environment, trade: there are more and more problems that can only be properly addressed by countries working together, and many of the key institutions are working less and less well. Will the world make progress on developing new frameworks for cooperative action, or at least find a way to work around the institutional problems that have blocked progress in the past?
6. The U.S. and China
Whether you think economically, geopolitically or militarily, the U.S.-China relationship will shape the kind of year we all have in 2010. The complicated economic interdependence of these major world players is so unprecedented and is changing so rapidly that neither side quite understands how it works. The very different historical experiences, systems of government and cultural frameworks of the two countries make it hard for them to understand and therefore to trust one another.
Fortunately, they share a set of extremely important common interests and so far this has helped keep relations on track. That relationship is sure to be tested in 2010; China is becoming more assertive as it drinks the heady wine of economic success. Japan went through a similar phase before its bubble burst a generation ago; this year we will watch both the United States and China struggle with a relationship that neither really wants but that neither can do without. For now.
5. The Balance of Power in Asia
It’s been a while since non-specialists spent much time thinking about the balance of power in key geopolitical regions of the world. For the last twenty years most people have thought about questions like ‘world order’ and the rise of democracy. The balance of power is coming back in 2010, though hopefully not with a bang. As China, India, Japan and the United States look warily at each other, it’s clear that no single power can hope to dominate East and South Asia right now. But what the Asian pecking order will be, and how it will be determined, are still up for grabs. Will Japan and India form a partnership with backing from the United States? Will Japan seek to deepen ties with China–even as Chinese-Indian relations become more strained? Changing relations among the Big Four will lead to responses from Asia’s many important second level powers: Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and so on. And of course we can always count on North Korea to do something annoying. Americans who take foreign news seriously are going to have to learn to follow this story; it will likely be on the top ten list again next year.
4. Pakistan
The world’s unhappiest and least stable nuclear state will stay at the forefront again this year. The Pakistani military is deeply committed to a profoundly unrealistic conception of the country’s interests and identity. Its leading civilian politicians are both incompetent and corrupt. Failures of governance have left much of the country poorly educated and poorly positioned to take advantage of the kind of economic opportunities that are leading its neighbor and rival India to new heights of power and prestige. Deep seated regional antagonisms periodically threaten the country’s ability to hold together. Nobody in Pakistan or outside of it seems to have the least idea about what to do. The Pakistanis are surprisingly good at managing things day by day, but it’s hard to ignore the increasing evidence that this country, which deserves much better, is trapped in a dead end of history. The decline of Pakistan, its effects on Pakistan’s neighborhood and on US policy, will likely continue to be a major concern all year long.
3. America at War
The United States is fighting two shooting wars in Asia and, as we were all unhappily reminded on December 25, fighting a shadowy conflict with a collection of ugly religious nutcases who will stop at nothing to murder U.S. civilians whenever they can. How the United States navigates the military challenges of its wars together with the political challenges at home and abroad will be one of the top stories of 2010. If things go well, by the end of the year we will see the U.S. headed out of an increasingly stabilized and recovering Iraq with at least the beginnings of some real progress in Afghanistan. We will also see progress against Al-Qaeda not only in the hills of the AfPak border regions but more broadly in the accelerated disruption of its international networks and in the continued hardening of Islamic opinion against this fanatical cult.
2. The Global Economy
2010 will determine whether the world dodged the bullet of the great 2008-2009 financial crisis. In a best case scenario, the recovery that started in 2009 will accelerate and by the end of the year most if not all of the world’s major economies will be looking at faster growth rates and better fiscal projections than anyone now expects. Unemployment will be falling even as fiscal and monetary stimulus is eased back and stock markets will begin to close in on their all time highs in the United States. Or not. Either way, all eyes will be riveted on economic performance this year; without continuing recovery all the other problems just get worse.
1. Iran and the World
By the end of 2010 we should now more about where this one is headed. Domestically, either the regime marginalizes or crushes the opposition, or its power and legitimacy are permanently impaired. Internationally, this will also be a year of decision. Some observers predict Israeli strikes as early as the spring. Others are less alarmist. One thing to remember: Israeli airstrikes against Iran could well lead to Iranian retaliation against American targets and not just Israeli ones in the region. Iranian attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf, or Iranian-backed terrorism elsewhere would put the Obama administration in a nasty corner. Returning Iranian fire would involve the United States in a potentially open-ended conflict; failing to return fire would be deeply unpopular in the United States.
Wild Cards to Watch For:
•King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the widely-revered King of Thailand, celebrated his 83rd birthday on December 5, and his health has been poor. Since World War II, the sagacious monarch has helped stabilize Thai politics and served as the focus of national identity. Thailand today is experiencing its most serious and complicated political crisis since the present King ascended the throne in 1946; it is not clear that anyone else in the royal family has the prestige and the experience to step into his shoes. The king’s departure from the political scene could set off destabilizing unrest that could worsen Thailand’s economic problems, strand tens of thousands of foreign tourists, and in a worst case scenario could pit China and the United States against one another with each side backing different Thai factions in what could become both a bloody and strategically important contest.
•The economy of Cuba continues on a downward trend. Although the island’s government has managed the transition from Fidel to Raul very smoothly, all is not well. The Cuban economy is propped up by subsidies from the mercurial and viscerally anti-Yanqui Hugo Chavez; the political strings attached to this support helped ensure that Cuba could not respond positively to the Obama administration’s attempts to ‘reset’ the relationship. The most likely outlook in 2010 is for more of the same, but the historically volatile people of this tempestuous island could surprise us all, and serious unrest in Cuba would present the Obama administration (and the rest of the region) with some difficult problems.
•Russia remains an angry, dissatisfied presence on the international scene. The potential for violence in its Islamic borderlands and among its unstable neighbors remains high. Russia might well move quickly and surprisingly in response to perceived opportunities or threats in its region; remember its 2008 war with Georgia.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
JAPAN: Japan Probes 1960s Nuclear Agreements With U.S.
OCTOBER 23, 2009
By YUKA HAYASHI
TOKYO -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Japan this week against letting a fact-finding mission into decades-old secret nuclear-weapons agreements affect relations between the two countries, according to an official familiar with the matter.
In a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa on Wednesday, Mr. Gates said Japan also should avoid letting the probe hurt the U.S.'s antinuclear-proliferation efforts, the official said. Mr. Kitazawa said the government would handle confidential information sensitively, said the official.
Japan, the only nation that has endured nuclear attacks, forbids making, possessing and storing nuclear weapons on its soil. But under an understanding reached in the early 1960s, Japan agreed to look the other way when nuclear-armed U.S. ships used Japanese ports. A 1969 agreement allowed nuclear weapons to be stationed in emergency cases on U.S. bases on the island of Okinawa, after it was returned to Japanese control in 1972.
Many elements of the agreements have been disclosed previously. Both governments say the agreements no longer have teeth because nuclear-armed U.S. vessels no longer stop in Japan.
But Japan's new government, now controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan after August elections, has launched a fact-finding investigation to make the agreements public and show how they were kept secret.
"In the past, prime ministers and foreign ministers of this country repeatedly denied the existence of the secret agreements and that eroded the public's trust in the government's foreign policy," said Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
Political analysts say the investigation is a largely symbolic move to show a change from governments run by the Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated Japanese politics for more than half a century, until last month.
"The DPJ wants to send a message to people that they have a new government with a different political style," said Norihiko Narita, president of Surugadai University and an informal political adviser to the DPJ.
The LDP said some secrecy was necessary. "Full disclosure of information on diplomatic negotiations doesn't necessarily guarantee the protection of national interest," the party's Policy Research Council said in a statement. "In conducting foreign policy, we always made our national interest and the well-being of our citizens the top priority, and disclosed what we could."
The investigation comes as the DPJ reviews Japan's overall foreign policy with a goal of giving Tokyo an equal role in its close bilateral ties with the U.S. Some experts say the probe seeks to discredit Japanese officials who had worked closely with Washington.
U.S. officials play down the potential impact of the investigation, saying the agreements are now out in the open and it is a domestic matter. "It is up to the Japanese government how they want to explore this," said Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
The investigation has created a buzz in Japan, where the secret agreements were long discussed but always officially denied. "I am very much looking forward to the DPJ showing us what we couldn't see before," said Masaaki Ota, a 42-year-old Tokyo flower-shop owner who supports the DPJ.
While the agreements have been something of an open secret in Japan, U.S. government documents concerning them have been gradually declassified for years. After the DPJ began the fact-finding mission, George Washington University Professor Robert Wampler posted online a package of relevant documents from university archives.
One 1969 memorandum by Jeanne Davis of the National Security Council to members of the Nixon administration discusses nuclear-weapons policy in Okinawa after the handover back to Japan. One option: "Japn [sic] now acquiesces in transit by naval vessels armed with nuclear weapons. This right would extend automatically to Okinawa. (This is sensitive and closely held information)."
Another 1969 memo, by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Alexis Johnson, describes an exchange with Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi regarding the deployment and storage of nuclear weapons in Okinawa. "He said that [then Prime Minister Eisaku] Sato and we were, in event of renewal of hostilities in Korea, absolutely determined to implement this secret understanding and give full support to our actions in Korea," Ambassador Johnson quoted the foreign minister as saying.
Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
By YUKA HAYASHI
TOKYO -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates cautioned Japan this week against letting a fact-finding mission into decades-old secret nuclear-weapons agreements affect relations between the two countries, according to an official familiar with the matter.
In a meeting with Japanese Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa on Wednesday, Mr. Gates said Japan also should avoid letting the probe hurt the U.S.'s antinuclear-proliferation efforts, the official said. Mr. Kitazawa said the government would handle confidential information sensitively, said the official.
Japan, the only nation that has endured nuclear attacks, forbids making, possessing and storing nuclear weapons on its soil. But under an understanding reached in the early 1960s, Japan agreed to look the other way when nuclear-armed U.S. ships used Japanese ports. A 1969 agreement allowed nuclear weapons to be stationed in emergency cases on U.S. bases on the island of Okinawa, after it was returned to Japanese control in 1972.
Many elements of the agreements have been disclosed previously. Both governments say the agreements no longer have teeth because nuclear-armed U.S. vessels no longer stop in Japan.
But Japan's new government, now controlled by the Democratic Party of Japan after August elections, has launched a fact-finding investigation to make the agreements public and show how they were kept secret.
"In the past, prime ministers and foreign ministers of this country repeatedly denied the existence of the secret agreements and that eroded the public's trust in the government's foreign policy," said Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.
Political analysts say the investigation is a largely symbolic move to show a change from governments run by the Liberal Democratic Party, which dominated Japanese politics for more than half a century, until last month.
"The DPJ wants to send a message to people that they have a new government with a different political style," said Norihiko Narita, president of Surugadai University and an informal political adviser to the DPJ.
The LDP said some secrecy was necessary. "Full disclosure of information on diplomatic negotiations doesn't necessarily guarantee the protection of national interest," the party's Policy Research Council said in a statement. "In conducting foreign policy, we always made our national interest and the well-being of our citizens the top priority, and disclosed what we could."
The investigation comes as the DPJ reviews Japan's overall foreign policy with a goal of giving Tokyo an equal role in its close bilateral ties with the U.S. Some experts say the probe seeks to discredit Japanese officials who had worked closely with Washington.
U.S. officials play down the potential impact of the investigation, saying the agreements are now out in the open and it is a domestic matter. "It is up to the Japanese government how they want to explore this," said Kurt Campbell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
The investigation has created a buzz in Japan, where the secret agreements were long discussed but always officially denied. "I am very much looking forward to the DPJ showing us what we couldn't see before," said Masaaki Ota, a 42-year-old Tokyo flower-shop owner who supports the DPJ.
While the agreements have been something of an open secret in Japan, U.S. government documents concerning them have been gradually declassified for years. After the DPJ began the fact-finding mission, George Washington University Professor Robert Wampler posted online a package of relevant documents from university archives.
One 1969 memorandum by Jeanne Davis of the National Security Council to members of the Nixon administration discusses nuclear-weapons policy in Okinawa after the handover back to Japan. One option: "Japn [sic] now acquiesces in transit by naval vessels armed with nuclear weapons. This right would extend automatically to Okinawa. (This is sensitive and closely held information)."
Another 1969 memo, by U.S. Ambassador to Japan Alexis Johnson, describes an exchange with Japanese Foreign Minister Kiichi Aichi regarding the deployment and storage of nuclear weapons in Okinawa. "He said that [then Prime Minister Eisaku] Sato and we were, in event of renewal of hostilities in Korea, absolutely determined to implement this secret understanding and give full support to our actions in Korea," Ambassador Johnson quoted the foreign minister as saying.
Write to Yuka Hayashi at yuka.hayashi@wsj.com
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A15
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
JAPAN: Worries Mount Over Japanese Minister’s Health
Japan's finance minister, Hirohisa Fujii, left, with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Tuesday. Jiji Press, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
January 6, 2010
TOKYO — Japan’s new government braced for another setback Tuesday after reports that its ailing 77-year-old finance minister was pressing to resign, although it appeared that the prime minister might try to persuade him to remain in his job. The news comes at a difficult time — when the government, already weakened by a series of policy blunders and scandals, is attempting the delicate task of stimulating an economy already burdened with enormous debt.
The minister, Hirohisa Fujii, a fiscal conservative trusted by investors, is considered one of the few experienced hands in the cabinet of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose Democratic Party swept to power in September.
Mr. Fujii, who had said he was suffering from exhaustion and high blood pressure, announced early on Tuesday that he was awaiting doctors’ advice on whether he should stay in office.
Early Wednesday, several news agencies reported that Mr. Fujii had decided he wanted to resign, citing unnamed lawmakers from the governing party. But Mr. Hatoyama said he hoped that Mr. Fujii would remain in his post to see the coming fiscal year’s budget through Parliament. He added, however, that he would also respect medical recommendations on the finance minister’s health.
Officials at the Finance Ministry declined to comment.
Mr. Fujii, a veteran bureaucrat turned politician, has been seen by investors as a reassuring check on the left-leaning government’s spending plans. In recent months he has wrangled with ministries over budget cuts as Japan struggles to rein in its runaway public debt, close to twice the size of the country’s economy.
He has repeatedly insisted that the government stick to a $477 billion cap on new bond issuance for the fiscal year starting in April.
Mr. Fujii checked into a hospital Dec. 28 and has commuted to work from the hospital since. He told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday that he had discussed his health with Mr. Hatoyama.
Japanese news agencies later said that Mr. Fujii ultimately told the prime minister that he did not feel well enough to face long days of questioning in Parliament this month over next year’s record $1 trillion budget, a major challenge for Mr. Hatoyama’s government.
The government fears that the economy, which has been struggling for years, could slide back into recession.
Mr. Fujii’s deputies, Yoshihiko Noda and Naoki Minezaki, are among those who have been mentioned as possible successors.
Public approval ratings for Mr. Hatoyama’s government have slid from postelection highs of more than 70 percent to less than 50 percent in recent polls. The drop comes as negotiations over the relocation of an American military base in Japan have stalled and amid financing scandals linked to the prime minister and his party’s secretary general.
Mr. Fujii said last year that he intended to retire, but he stayed on after the Democratic Party victory, which ended a half century of almost uninterrupted single-party rule in Japan.
S. KOREA: South Korea Confronts Open Secret of Abortion
A group of doctors held a news conference in Seoul to ask “forgiveness” for having performed illegal abortions. Choe Sang-Hun/International Herald Tribune
January 6, 2010
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — Displaying images of fetuses on her computer screen, Dr. Choi Anna described what happens to them during an abortion. For years, she said, she washed her hands in contrition after each one she performed.
Her colleague Dr. Shim Sang-duk said that until it halted the practice in September, their Ion Women’s Clinic in Seoul did 30 abortions a month, twice the number of babies delivered there. Nearly all were illegal.
“We sold our soul for money,” Dr. Choi said. “Abortion was an easy way to make money.”
In a country where abortion is both widespread and, with few exceptions, against the law, Dr. Choi and Dr. Shim are hoping to force South Korea’s first serious public discussion of the ethics of the procedure. In November, they and dozens of other obstetricians held a news conference to ask for “forgiveness” for having performed illegal abortions.
The group they formed, Gynob, has called on other doctors to declare whether they have performed illegal abortions. In December, they set up another organization, Pro-Life Doctors, which tries to discourage women from having abortions and runs a hot line to report clinics that perform them illegally. This month, they plan to begin reporting practitioners of such abortions to the police.
Gynob’s morality-based campaign is unusual for South Korea, where abortion carries little of the emotional or religious significance that it does in many Western countries. But it is gaining attention here in no small part because it is coinciding with a very public reassessment of abortion by the government, which is looking for ways to reverse a decline in South Korea’s birthrate.
Until now, abortion had never really become a hot issue here, said Hahm In-hee, a professor of family sociology at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “The society considers it a family issue, and there is a strong taboo against discussing a family matter in public,” she said.
For its part, Gynob is focusing on highlighting the hypocrisy of having a law that is almost never enforced. The group’s goal is not to resolve this by liberalizing the law but by ending abortions altogether.
Gynob has support from Christian activists, but the group says that its motivations are not religious and that it has non-Christian members. And while some feminists have advocated for a woman’s right to have an abortion and Roman Catholics have stated their opposition to the procedure, those efforts have attracted little public attention. Abortion has yet to emerge as a political campaign issue here.
The country’s Mother and Child Health Law permits abortions only when the mother’s health is in serious danger, or in cases of rape, incest or severe hereditary disorders. It is never legal after the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Based on insurance data and a government-sponsored study, academic researchers have concluded that those exceptions applied to only about 4 percent of an estimated 340,000 abortions performed in 2005. But that year, only one case of illegal abortion — which, on paper, is punishable by up to a year in prison for the woman and two for the doctor — went to court, according to data that prosecutors submitted to Parliament in October.
For decades, the South Korean government tended to look the other way, seeing a high birthrate as an impediment to economic growth. In the 1970s and 1980s, families with more than two children were denounced as unpatriotic, with official posters in South Korean villages driving the point home. Until the early 1990s, men could be exempted from mandatory army reserve duty if they had vasectomies.
Now, the government has concluded that this policy was too successful.
South Korea’s fertility rate, which stood at 4.5 children per woman in the 1970s, had fallen to 1.19 children by 2008, one of the lowest rates in the world. The government fears that the recent financial downturn may have depressed it further, and that the country’s rapidly aging population will undercut the economy’s viability.
In November, President Lee Myung-bak called for “bold” steps to increase the nation’s birthrate.
“Even if we don’t intend to hold anyone accountable for all those illegal abortions in the past, we must crack down on them from now on,” the minister for health, welfare and family affairs, Jeon Jae-hee, said.
But Ms. Jeon added that any crackdown should be coupled with an increase in medical fees for all doctors. The government cap on payments for medical services is thought to have encouraged doctors to perform off-the-books, and potentially far more lucrative, services like illegal abortions.
With fewer women having babies and the government holding down medical fees, many obstetrics clinics are struggling. Some obstetricians have switched to more lucrative skin care and obesity clinics. To those who remain, abortion — which usually costs about $340 and is paid for in cash up front because it is not covered by insurance — has become “a source of income we find really difficult to give up,” said Dr. Kang Byong-hee, an obstetrician in Paju, north of Seoul.
In addition to government policy and the economics of health care, social factors have contributed to the abortion rate. A bias for boys and against the disabled led to the widespread practice of aborting female fetuses or those with physiological defects, said Choi Sung-jae, a professor of social welfare at Seoul National University. A stigma against unmarried mothers, women’s increasing participation in the work force and the high cost of education are also seen as contributing to the trend.
Dr. Choi, of the Ion Women’s Clinic, said: “We see a tendency to have one perfect child and abort the rest. We had women demanding an abortion simply because they had taken cold medicine or drunk too much while pregnant.”
Gynob’s anti-abortion campaign is meeting resistance, notably from other doctors.
“We credit them for bringing a widespread but hushed-up social anomaly to the surface, but we can’t go along with their radical tactics,” said Baik Eun-jeong, an obstetrician who runs a clinic in Seoul’s upscale Kangnam district and speaks for the Korean Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The association, which claims 4,000 members, says that a sudden crackdown that does not address the causes of abortion will only cause greater problems.
“More women will now go abroad for abortion,” Dr. Baik said. “Illegal abortions will go deeper underground, causing more medical accidents. There will be more abandoned infants.”
Meanwhile, the government has begun putting out a new message in public service announcements and posters in subways: having more babies is more patriotic. “With abortion, you are aborting the future,” says one such notice.
The latest government budget calls for increased cash bonuses for families with more than two children as well as greater financial aid for single mothers in need and vouchers for couples seeking help at fertility clinics.
All these voices are fueling a broader public discussion of abortion as Parliament deliberates about revising the Mother and Child Health Law. In November, President Lee said, “This is the time to start the debate.”
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