{Topics on 7.5} Please Make Sure to Study Hard in Advance & Post a Comment

<Topic 1>Korea’s cigarette prices among the world’s lowest <img src="https://t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/cafe/2211843B53B3DE7809" class="txc-image" actualwidth="650" hspace="1" vspace="1" border="0" width="650" exif="{}" data-filename="20140630001553_0.jpg" style="clear:none;float:none;" id="A_2211843B53B3DE7809858B"/> Cigarette prices in Korea remain some of the lowest among 41 major economies around the world, recent data revealed on Monday.   According to Korea Institute of Public Finance, the average price of best-selling Korean cigarettes between 2012 and 2013 was 2,500 won ($2.20) a pack, one sixth of the price set in Norway at $14.50 per pack.   The state-run institute added that the proportion of tax levied on tobacco products in Korea was also relatively low. About 1,550 won, or 62 percent of cigarette prices, were for taxes, it said.   The study utilized a recent report released by the World Health Organization, it added.   <Questions>1. Are you a smoker? If you smoke, when and why did you start smoking? 2. What are the advantages and the disadvantages of smoking, in your opinion?3. If you smoke, how much money do you spend smoking in a week or in a month? 4. Do you think cigarette prices should be raised in Korea? If so, what price range is       reasonable?5. Do you think a high tax on cigarettes encourages people to quit smoking? <Topic 2> Men getting serious about parenting   Park Sung-hoon, a 33-year-old software engineer in Seoul, recently took a year-long paternity leave to care for his newborn twins. His wife just returned to work after using up her own leave.   "It was a tough decision to take 12 months off because the information-technology business is so competitive and rapidly changing that it is challenging to take such a long leave for developers like me," Park said.   Park said he may have difficulty readjusting himself to work when he comes back. But the couple decided to extend the leave to remain their two-year-old babies' primary caregiver for another year. After that, they plan to seek outside childcare arrangements.   He is still a rare case in Korea where traditional housewife and bread-earner roles are divided and many men think taking paternity leave is the norm for women.   But he represents slowly but steadily growing new fathers dubbed "Alpha dads," guys who are as serious about the childcare as they are about their work.   Under the paternity leave system introduced in 1988, the number of new fathers who applied for the leave nearly tripled to 2,293 out of 69,616 parents in 2013 in four years. The corresponding figure was 819 out of 41,732 in 2010, showed data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor.   The program initially allowed only women to apply for the unpaid leave but men was allowed to it from 1995. In 2001, the government began to provide 200,000 won ($195) a month to a parent who cares for a baby 12 months old or younger. They now receive up to 1 million won a month in financial subsidy for one year, according to the data.   "The subsidy is not enough to help make both ends meet. But I couldn't give up the first years of bonding time with my baby," Kim Jae-won, a Seoul-based journalist in his mid 30s, said.   <Questions> 1. What do you think about paternity leave? Is it essential to couples working     together for a living? 2. Do you think it is easy to take a paternity leave in Korea? If not, why? 3. If you are a father who has a baby to care for, do you want to use paternity leave?    what about period of the leave? 4. What should be improved in terms of paternity leave system in Korea?     (ex: subsidy, period, childcare facilities and so on)