By Bae Keun-min
Staff Reporter

Counseling and parenting courses for parents who abuse their children will be mandatory starting from the second half of this year.

The parental rights of those who do not want to raise their children will be removed, facilitating the adoption process and admission to shelters.

Also, if an ethnic Korean with non-Korean nationality wants to adopt a child here, he or she will be treated as a Korean national and follow the same procedures applied to locals.

These are the highlights of new child-related policies adopted Tuesday by the government during a Cabinet meeting presided over by President Roh Moo-hyun.

According to the plans, the government will amend the child protection act, through which detailed information about child sex offenders will be publicized. The offenders will also be prohibited from working at certain jobs.

The government will conduct studies this year on whether to ratify the 1993 Hague Convention on the protection of children and cooperation with respect to inter-country adoption.

The convention includes a clause that makes international adoption possible only failures to adopt domestically.

The government will hold off on an adoption clause that stipulates the removal of parental rights from those who show no intention of raising their children, after reviewing case studies of other nations.

The government is careful considering applying the same child adoption procedures to both locals and ethnic Koreans with non-Korean citizenship.

Records will classify those adoptions as local if the new rule is implemented.

Overseas Koreans have had follow adoption procedures for foreigners, with the records categorizing their adoptions as international.

The government will also provide single parents on a low income 50,000 won per month for each child. The subsidy will be expanded later.

Other aspects of government plans extend priority to low-income families with children waiting to move into public apartments with long-term and low leases, after revising related laws.

To help locate needy children for free lunches, schools will run emergency support counseling offices.

Coverage for medical costs for premature babies and deformed children in low-income families will include families at the bottom 20 percent of income earners, expanded from the bottom 10 percent.

Free medical services will be available for children aged 18 years or younger whose families earn no more than 120 percent of the minimum cost of living. The current age limit is 12 years.

By 2008, childcare subsidies will be extended to families whose income is less than the national average.

Other measures for children lacking financial support from their family will also be reviewed for implementation.

Guidelines to deal with offenders involved in school violence will be discussed in a research group. The group will also prepare relief measures for the victims.

The government plans to expand the role of teenager violence specialists into investigating underage offenders.

kenbae@koreatimes.co.kr