Tag - children

 
 

CHILDREN

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said "unjust human rights violations" were committed when sending tens of thousands of children overseas for adoption.
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 2, 2025
South Korea president apologizes for overseas adoptions failures
International adoptions began after the Korean War as a way to remove children born to local mothers and American GI fathers from a society that emphasized ethnic homogeneity.
Smartphones help passengers pass the time on a train near Toyoake, an industrial suburb of Nagoya.
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2025
Can this city make residents put down their smartphones?
The ordinance, which was approved in a 12-7 vote by the city assembly last week, is largely symbolic, but there is heavy social pressure in Japan to follow official guidelines.
Search and rescue operations continue for victims trapped under the rubble of a collapsed school, in Sidoarjo, East Java province, Indonesia, on Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 2, 2025
Five survivors pulled from collapsed school in Indonesia as rescuers race against time
Part of the multistory boarding school, in the town of Sidoarjo on the island of Java, gave way suddenly as students gathered for afternoon prayers.
A kindergarten bus crashed into a house in Chiba Prefecture on Monday, killing the driver.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 30, 2025
Kindergarten bus crashes in Chiba, killing driver
Others in the bus are not in any life-threatening condition and police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Australia's regulator said it will initially focus on platforms with the greatest number of users, where there are higher risks of harm.
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 24, 2025
WhatsApp and Twitch among sites that could face Australia social media ban
The head of Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has written to 16 more companies to "self-assess" whether they fall under the ban's remit.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (left) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak in Kyiv on Aug. 24.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 24, 2025
Carney and Zelenskyy put stolen Ukraine children in focus at U.N.
Russia faces accusations of abducting Ukrainian children since 2014 and ramping up the practice after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Marriage is rapidly declining in South Korea as rising education and career aspirations collide with traditional gender norms.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2025
South Korea’s baby bust threatens its demographic future
At 1.2 births per woman, Japan is still reproducing faster than South Korea, where the birth rate has dropped to just 0.75 — the lowest in the world.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent decades promoting vaccine misinformation, including the widely debunked claim that the MMR shot causes autism.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 19, 2025
RFK Jr. panelists make initial changes to childhood vaccine schedule
The vote against the MMRV shot comes as public health experts fear more changes that flout prevailing medical advice are in the pipeline.
Save the Children Japan domestic program chief Sonoko Kawakami speaks at a news conference in Tokyo in July. A survey conducted by the group in June has found that over 90% of low-income households with children face food insecurity.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 17, 2025
Over 90% of low-income families in Japan struggling to feed children
A survey conducted by Save the Children Japan has found that single-parent households were among those facing the most dire food insecurity.
Children stand near a nursery in Belgorod, Russia, on Aug. 26.
WORLD
Sep 16, 2025
Russia expanding forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children
U.S.-funded research has identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education.
High school baseball players line up during the opening ceremony of Summer Koshien last month.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Sep 16, 2025
Japanese baseball grapples with shrinking player base
Behind the buzz created by Shohei Ohtani lies a troubling reality: The number of young players in Japan has fallen sharply in recent years.
Police issued third arrest warrants on Thursday for two elementary school teachers involved in an online chat group that shared secretly taken images and videos of girls.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 12, 2025
Teachers arrested for allegedly sharing images of girls face more charges
The total number of children victimized by the group has risen to at least 25, according to the police.
The number of children who died from abuse totaled 65 in Japan in fiscal 2023, down by seven from the preceding year, according to the government.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 11, 2025
Japan records 65 child abuse deaths in fiscal 2023
The number is down by seven from the preceding year, according to the Children and Families Agency.
Tom Riches, whose firefighter brother was killed when the Trade Centers fell, and his son Tommy, 10, at the family home in Brooklyn on Sept. 5.
WORLD / Society
Sep 11, 2025
A new 9/11 generation: These children promise to never forget
They have no memory of the Sept. 11 attacks but are increasingly shouldering the responsibility to carry it on.
Omar Abu Kuwaik, a 6-year-old Gazan child who lost an arm, gestures as six Gazan families with wounded children arrive at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport for medical treatment in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 2
WORLD
Sep 11, 2025
Missing limbs and loved ones, Gazan children begin treatment abroad
At least 45,000 children have been wounded in Gaza, many of them suffering life-changing injuries, according to UNICEF.
East Asia’s fertility plunge is driven not just by financial costs but by perfectionist cultural expectations that burden parents with intense educational and social demands.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 5, 2025
‘Confugenics’ and East Asia's demographic crisis
The numbers are staggering when you dig into them. Parents in Japan covered half of higher education costs in 2024 — more than double the OECD average.
Sayaka Togitani's daughter Hinami was delivered via emergency cesarean section but suffered fetal hypoxia, which left her with a severe disability.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 3, 2025
Family calls for daughter born after car accident to be recognized as a victim
The family of a pregnant woman who died after being hit by a car wants the daughter, born afterward with a severe disability, to be deemed a victim.
The annual number of babies in Japan has been on a downward trend since around 1975, falling below 1 million in 2016, 900,000 in 2019 and 800,000 in 2022.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 29, 2025
Japan births hit fresh low in first half of 2025
The January-June figure, including babies born to foreign nationals living in Japan and Japanese nationals living overseas, stood below 400,000 for the fourth consecutive year.
The number of children on nursery waiting lists decreased to a record low as of April 1, reflecting a decrease in births.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 29, 2025
Kids on nursery waiting lists down for eighth year amid falling births
As of April this year, there were 2,254 children on waiting lists, down from a high of 26,081 in 2017.
The Justice Ministry has drafted an ordinance proposing a legally mandated post-divorce child support amount of ¥20,000 per child per month, sources said.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2025
Statutory post-divorce child support to be set at ¥20,000 a month
According to a 2021 welfare ministry survey, only 28.1% of single-mother households and 8.7% of single-father households had actually received child support from the other parents.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes