Korea demography reader (March 21, 2010 edition)

• The Ministry of Gender Equality has changed its name to Ministry of Gender Equality and Family after taking over duties of after taking over government policy on family, youth, childcare, and multicultural family affairs from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

• The number of jobless female college graduates has hit a record high. The portion of unemployed women with college diplomas is a whopping forty percent.

• Meanwhile, the number of "regular workers" (those on contract for full-time work of at least one year) hit a record high of 9.7 million, accounting for 60% of the work force, while the numbers of day workers and the self-employed fell.

• South Korea is the chintziest, cheapest, and most miserly country in the OECD when it comes to college scholarships. Of course, one reason may be that ROK college students have lucrative kwa•oé (과외, private teaching) to use for relatively low-cost tuition and they tend to live at home anyway.

• A thirty-eight-year-old man from Ethiopia has become the first refugee to be naturalized as a Korean citizen.