January 18, 2019

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South Korea's Sports Prestige Gets Eclipsed By Sexual Abuse Against Female Athletes

Two-time Olympic gold medal speed skater Shim Suk-hee revealed earlier this month she was repeatedly raped by her coach. Now, South Korea’s governing sports body has promised a crackdown on coaches.



MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

From tae kawan do and baseball to skating and golf, South Korea has established itself in recent years as a sports powerhouse. Its medal counts have been in the Top 10 in recent Summer and Winter Olympics. But that glory and prestige has been eclipsed by the shadow of violence and sexual abuse against female athletes. NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports from Seoul.

ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: With just weeks to go before last year’s Pyongyang Winter Olympics, short-track speed skater Shim Suk-hee went missing from the national team’s training camp. A sports ministry investigation found that Shim, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was beaten by her coach, Cho Jae-bom, the day she went missing. Cho was sacked and convicted of abusing four athletes, including Shim. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail last September. Cho has denied the charges through his lawyer. Shim testified at Cho’s appeal hearing last month and spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SHIM SUK-HEE: (Through interpreter) I mustered my courage to come here today because I hope there will be no more victims like myself in the sports world and because I want to do what I can, not just for myself, but for the future.

KUHN: This month, Shim went further, accusing Cho of repeatedly raping her since she was 17. She’s now 21. As the scandal grabbed headlines, a petition on the presidential office’s website calling for harsher sentencing of Cho got over a quarter of a million signatures. Government ministries and lawmakers promised to get tough on sexual abuse in sports. In a meeting with his aides this week, President Moon Jae-in called for thorough investigations and stiff punishment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT MOON JAE-IN: (Speaking Korean).

KUHN: Recent allegations of physical and sexual violence in sports, he said, reveal a shameful side hidden beneath the shiny facade of South Korea as a sports powerhouse. Also this week, a former judo athlete and a tae kwan do trainee stepped up to accuse their coaches of physical and sexual violence, but some observers say it’s just a drop in the bucket.

CHUNG YONGCHUL: Still, the numbers are low, and we all know why – because of all the threat they have. They’re afraid to talk about it.

KUHN: Chung Yongchul is a professor of sport psychology at Seoul’s so gone University and an activist against abuse in sports. He says the government’s been promising to crack down on cases of abuse for the past decade, but thanks to a stubborn culture of impunity, very little has changed. Some of that, he notes, has roots in South Korea’s Confucian traditions in which a teacher’s authority is just like a father’s. It must be obeyed and not challenged.

CHUNG: That’s part of the reason why this is so hard for the athlete to speak up because you’re actually accusing, like, a father-like figure – accusing him as an aggressor.

KUHN: That’s also why sports authorities who have the power to punish abusers often shield them, Chung says. And help centers and hotlines set up for the athletes often side against them. But Chung adds that the strength of public outrage in South Korea at the abuse of skater Shim Suk-hee could mean this time is different.

CHUNG: So I think this could be the last chance for the Korean sport to actually eradicate all the problems.

KUHN: And if South Korea comes home from next year’s Tokyo Olympics with a reduced haul of medals but an increase in athletes’ human rights, Chung says that’s definitely something Koreans can live with. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul.

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'The Forward,' Storied Jewish Paper, Shutters Print Edition After 121 Years

A plaque from the original Daily Forward office, seen adorning its Lower Manhattan headquarters in 2013.

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It has been a long, long time since New York City’s newsstands have been bereft of copies of The Forward. Founded as a Yiddish-language daily in 1897, the newspaper once known as The Jewish Daily Forward endured a host of major changes over its long life span — but through them all, the small publication reliably went to press with news that its predominantly American Jewish audience often couldn’t find elsewhere.

But that will change come springtime.

The paper announced Thursday that it is ending its print operation to “become a digitally focused publisher,” laying off 10 jobs — or nearly 30 percent of its staff — in the process. That includes The Forward‘s editor-in-chief, Jane Eisner.

“The Forward has never stagnated. Over our 121-year history, we have changed our format many times, launching new sections, publishing in new languages (Yiddish, English, Russian), and embracing change in our community,” the publication’s CEO and publisher, Rachel Fishman Feddersen, said in a letter to readers.

“Whereas our readers once went to the newsstand with a nickel to read the news of the day, today, the vast majority of our community connects through the digital world. That is where the Forward is and will be.”

Founded by Yiddish-speaking socialist champions of trade unions, the traditionally muckraking newspaper reached its zenith back in the early 1930s, when the paper had a nationwide circulation of upwards of 275,000 At various times it boasted the writings of future Nobel laureates Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel. In recent decades, it has adopted an English-language version and cut back to a weekly schedule as its circulation declined to the tens of thousands.

Still, despite its diminishing physical reach, The Forward has maintained an outsize impact, both among its dedicated following and occasionally with major scoops — as it did in 2017, when the paper dropped a bombshell story about President Trump’s then-counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka.

“We understand that the American Jewish story is really intertwined with so many other things that are going on across this country today,” Eisner told NPR’s David Folkenflik days after the Gorka story dropped. “And so we think we are continuing this rich journalistic heritage, but we’re writing for a much broader audience.”

Its digital reach remains sizable as well, according to Feddersen, who said in a statement emailed to NPR that more than 2 million readers a month find the publication’s work online. She said it is that audience the paper wants to focus on serving now.

“We’ve always been truth tellers at the Forward,” she added, “recognizing reality and not sugar-coating it, and knowing what it takes to serve the community.”

Still, the NewsGuild of New York, a union representing some of the staff at The Forward, isn’t buying the explanation that the move is motivated by a shift to digital.

“This is simply an excuse to justify these layoffs,” the union said in a statement released Thursday. “Our members have already been serving as a digital team, ensuring that the beloved brand remains relevant regardless of the platform, and they have been instrumental in creating a robust digital presence for the organization.”

We are demanding transparency, including evidence of reported financial losses and the strategy that will “complete its evolution.” Guild members will continue to hold management accountable as we fight for the future of The Forward. pic.twitter.com/mS3v2MQ7XW

— NewsGuild of NY (@nyguild) January 17, 2019

“We are demanding transparency,” the NewsGuild added, “including evidence of reported financial losses and the strategy they claim will ‘complete its evolution’ to digital.”

The Forward‘s digital director, Dave Goldiner, who is not a NewsGuild member, also found himself among this week’s layoffs.

“I’m not an accountant, I’m not a bean counter, I’m not a businessperson, so it’s hard for me to know what they’re looking at when they looked at this,” he told NPR. “Certainly some of the things don’t make sense on the face of it.”

But Goldiner, who spent seven years with the paper, said he is willing to give its management the benefit of the doubt. “It’s a sad day,” he said, “but I do see the logic in what they are trying to do, which is to try and move faster to a bigger audience online, and to try and keep what The Forward does alive.”

And he said the storied publication’s survival, ultimately, is worth fighting for — and courting investors and donors for, too.

“If there’s someone out there listening or reading this that has a couple of million dollars in their pocket,” he added, “I can’t think of a better place to invest in the future of the truth, in the future of decency, diversity and all those values that The Forward has stood for, for 121 years — and hopefully will continue to.”

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Federal Shutdown Has Meant Steep Health Bills For Some Families

Demonstrators affiliated with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association protested the federal shutdown at a Capitol Hill rally earlier this month in Washington, D.C.

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Updated at 3:14 p.m. EST.

Joseph Daskalakis’ son Oliver was born on New Year’s Eve, a little over a week into the current government shutdown, and about 10 weeks before he was expected.

The prematurely born baby ended up in a specialized neonatal intensive care unit, the only one near the family’s home in Lakeville, Minn., that could care for him.

But Daskalakis, who works as an air traffic controller outside Minneapolis, has an additional worry: The hospital where his newborn son is being treated is not part of his current insurer’s network and the partial government shutdown prevents Daskalakis from filing the paperwork necessary to switch insurers, as he would otherwise be allowed to do.

As a result, he could be on the hook for a hefty bill — all the while not receiving pay. Daskalakis is just one example of federal employees for whom being unable to make changes to their health plans really matters.

Although the estimated 800,000 government workers affected by the shutdown won’t lose their health insurance, an unknown number are in limbo like Daskalakis — unable to add family members such as spouses, newborns or adopted children to an existing health plan; unable to change insurers because of unforeseen circumstances; or unable deal with other issues that might arise.

“With 800,000 employees out there, I imagine that this is not a one-off event,” says Dan Blair, who served as both acting director and deputy director of the federal Office of Personnel Management during the early 2000s and is now senior counselor at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The longer this goes on, the more we will see these types of occurrences.”

While little Oliver Daskalakis is getting stronger every day — he’s now out of the ICU, according to his father’s local air traffic union representative — it’s unclear how the situation will affect his family’s finances.

That’s because out-of-network charges are generally far higher than being in-network, and NICU care is enormously expensive,no matter what. Those bills could add up, especially as the family’s current insurance plan has an out-of-pocket maximum of $12,000 annually. Because Oliver was born before the new year, the family could face that amount twice — for 2018 and for 2019.

And Daskalakis still isn’t getting paid.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to change my insurance, or when I’ll get paid again,” Daskalakis wrote to Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., who shared the letter on Facebook and before her Senate colleagues last week.

Other families are also worried about paperwork delays, and the financial and medical effects a prolonged shutdown could cause.

Dania Palanker, a health policy researcher at Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, studies what happens when families face insurance difficulties. Now she’s also living it.

After arranging to reduce her work hours because of health problems, Palanker knew her family would not qualify for coverage through her university job. No problem, she thought, as she began the process in December of enrolling her family in coverage offered by her husband’s job with the federal government.

But there was a hitch.

“We could not get the paperwork in time to apply for special enrollment through the government and get it processed before the shutdown,” Palanker says.

Georgetown allowed her to boost her work hours this month to keep the family insured through January, but Georgetown’s share of her coverage will end in February.

Palanker’s treatments are expensive, so she is likely to hit or exceed her annual $2,000 deductible in January — then start over with another annual deductible once the family secures new health coverage.

“I’m postponing treatment in hopes that it is just a month and I’m back on the federal plan in February,” says Palanker, who has an autoimmune disease that causes nerve damage. “But I can’t postpone indefinitely, as my condition will get worse.”

Overseeing federal health benefits programs is within the purview of the Office of Personnel Management, whose data hub is operational, according to a spokeswoman. But getting information to that data hub to make the kind of changes Daskalakis, Palanker and others need depends on the individual agencies that employ government workers.

The OPM has told government agencies “that they should have [human resources] staff available during the lapse, specifically to process” such requests, which are called “qualifying life events,” the spokeswoman says.

Workers enrolled in plans under the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, which covers about 5 million federal workers and retirees in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, can make qualifying life event changes directly with the insurer if they can’t get it processed by their workplace, an association spokesman said Friday.

In a written statement Wednesday, Smith said: “Oliver’s story is a powerful reminder that hundreds of thousands of real families have had their financial and personal lives turned upside down by this unnecessary shutdown.” The Minnesota senator called on the president to come back to the negotiating table.

For Daskalakis, there’s been some recent good news.

His union representative, Tony Walsh, says both the OPM website and Daskalakis’ insurer now indicate that the family’s request to change to an insurance plan that classifies the hospital as “in-network” will be retroactive to Oliver’s birthday — so the out-of-network charges may not play a role.

Just to be safe, “Joe is currently working on an insurance appeal based on no in-network care [being available],” Walsh reports in an emailed statement.

Still, the family has already received an initial $6,000 bill from the hospital, Walsh notes. He says that $6,000 does not include costs associated with Oliver’s birth or his stay in the intensive care unit — those charges likely are still to come.

Walsh says the shutdown is affecting a broad swath of employees in ways many lawmakers never anticipated.

The workers “are essential to the system,” he says, “and it’s unfair they are being treated this way.”

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service, is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation and not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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