SEOUL, April 13 (Reuters) - Every Saturday a bunch of young South Koreans gathers in Incheon just west of Seoul to discuss their battles with drug abuse, seeking sympathy and support in usually emotional exchanges. The free midday therapy sessions are organised by Choi Jin-mook, who fought addiction for more than 20 years before changing into a counsellor gamingdeals.shop and advocating for a shift in South Korea's medicine coverage towards treatment and away from punishment. Choi, 48, started taking nonprescription cough medicines at age 17 and was jailed for marijuana in his 20s. In and out of prison for 15 years, he turned to meth and stronger medication before another addict-turned-counsellor led him to an "awakening". South Korea has solely six drug rehabilitation centres, in accordance with Choi, including simply two run by the food and drug safety ministry. Compared, Japan - with 126 million people to South Korea's fifty two million - has about 90 rehab centres. The centre Choi heads is one among three arrange 10 years in the past with funding from Japan.
The centres run on a Japanese model and rent solely former addicts to supply care and counselling. Choi and different counsellors have been making an attempt to build more rehab centres and make them extra accessible, but Choi mentioned he has did not get authorities funding due to a basic lack of consciousness of the need for more amenities. Certainly one of the most important issues is that South Korea's corrections system focuses totally on punitive detention and lacks rehabilitation support, Choi mentioned. In latest months, the arrests of chaebol heirs and celebrities resembling award-winning actor Yoo Ah-in on unlawful medication charges have prompted authorities to crack down on narcotics and bolster customs enforcement. Drug crimes are typically punishable by no less than six months in prison or as much as 14 years for repeat offenders and sellers. While most first- and second-time offenders usually get suspended sentences and 30 to forty hours of obligatory drug training, Choi stated this does little to get them off medicine.
The government created special intra-agency squads last week to clamp down on drugmakers and distributors, and Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon unveiled plans final 12 months to develop state rehab facilities, vowing to battle drugs "as if we're at war". The justice ministry did not respond to requests for information on any plans for more state rehab centres. And the food and drug safety ministry mentioned it might add just one this 12 months on account of funds constraints, without elaborating. On Thursday, the Seoul metropolis government introduced an expansion of support for addicts, including growing a rehab centre at a city hospital and dealing with Choi's organisation to open no less than two more residential facilities. Drugs have grow to be cheaper and more accessible because of social media and a rise in overseas travel, Choi stated. The number of individuals convicted of drug crimes shot up to greater than 16,000 in 2021, from around 12,000 in 2015, according to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office. The quantity of confiscated illicit medication more than tripled to a report 1.3 tonnes (2,870 lb) in 2021, due partly to multinational investigations into smuggling rings, data from the prosecutors' office also confirmed. Meth, cocaine and Amazon Beauty (gamingdeals.shop) marijuana made up around 85% of the seizures. Authorities are as well seeing extra synthetic cannabinoids and opioids like fentanyl, which is up to a hundred instances more powerful than morphine. Lee Kyoung-ran, a customs officer at South Korea's largest airport in Incheon. President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has lamented that the nation is no longer "drug-free", final week ordered tougher measures to root out traffickers and confiscate drug income. Meanwhile, addicts attempting to give up are left on the lookout for assist. Desperate to get off meth, Lee Dong-jae, 23, managed to seek out Choi last 12 months. Choi provided free counselling and housing at his rehab centre and also gave Lee a job at his wife's restaurant.
Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham; born 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He got here to prominence within the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced (1999-2001), directed by Edgar Wright. He and Wright co-wrote the movies Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and The World's End (2013), known collectively as the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, all of which noticed Wright directing and Pegg starring alongside Nick Frost. Gillian Rosemary (née Smith), a former civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician and keyboard salesman. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he took on his stepfather's surname "Pegg" after his mom remarried. Beckingham as his surname. The King's School, Gloucester. Pegg moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire when he was 16 and studied English literature and theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon College. While there, he carried out as a member of a comedy troupe called "David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus", alongside David Walliams, Dominik Diamond, and Jason Bradbury. Th is conte nt was done by GSA Conte nt Gener ator DEMO.
Asylum, Faith in the future, Big Train and Hippies. Between 1998 and 2004, Pegg was regularly featured on BBC Radio 4's The 99p Challenge. Pegg's other credit embody appearances on the planet War II mini-sequence Band of Brothers; the television comedies Black Books, Brass Eye and I'm Alan Partridge; and the films The Parole Officer, 24 Hour Party People, and Guest House Paradiso. He played various roles during the tour of Steve Coogan's 1998 live stage present The Man Who Thinks He's It. In 1999, he created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom Spaced with Jessica Stevenson. The series was directed by Edgar Wright, with whom Pegg and Stevenson had previously worked on Asylum, and Pegg wrote the character of Mike Watt specifically for his good friend Nick Frost. For his efficiency on this series, Pegg was nominated for a British Comedy Award as Best Male Comedy Newcomer. The experience of constructing a Spaced fantasy sequence that includes zombies led to Pegg and Wright co-writing the "romantic zombie comedy" movie Shaun of the Dead, launched in April 2004, wherein Pegg also starred.