S. Korean miners
saved after 9 days
The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea -- Two South Korean miners who were rescued after being trapped deep underground for nine days said they had lived on instant coffee powder and water falling from the ceiling of a blocked shaft.
The two men, aged 62 and 56, were pulled out to safety on Friday night from the shaft at a zinc mine in the town of Bonghwa. They had been stranded there after a heap of earth fell and clogged the entrance of the shaft about 620 feet underground on Oct. 26.
Bang Jong-hyo, a doctor who treated the miners at a local hospital, told reporters Saturday that both men were in fairly good condition, though they initially said they were suffering hypothermia and muscle pains. He said the two were expected to be released from the hospital within days.
Bang said the two miners told him they shared 30 sticks of instant coffee while trapped underground.
The two also drank water falling from the shaft's ceiling and made a fire to survive, local emergency officers said.
"I have lots of things to tell my father so I've written them down on a notebook in the past 10 days," said Park Geun-hyung, the son of one of the rescued miners, Park Jeong-ha. "Now I want to spend some time with my father to tell him what I want to say and listen to what I want to hear from him."
President Yoon Suk Yeol called their rescue "miracle-like" and "touching."
Yoon sent a senior presidential official to the miners to convey letters wishing for their quick recovery and unspecified gifts.
In the letters, Yoon was quoted as saying the miners have given "new hope to the Republic of South Korea, which has been stricken by grief," his office said Sunday, in an apparent reference to a harrowing Halloween crowd surge in Seoul that killed 156 people last weekend.
Beijing hosts run
amid 'zero-covid'
The Associated Press
BEIJING -- Thousands of runners took to the streets of China's capital on Sunday for the return of the Beijing marathon after a two-year covid-19 hiatus, even as another death blamed on China's strict pandemic controls generated more public anger.
Authorities are trying to restore a sense of normalcy while sticking to a "zero-covid" strategy that locks down neighborhoods when any virus cases are found and quarantines everyone arriving from overseas in hotels for seven to 10 days.
A simmering public frustration, which has grown as the rest of the world opens up, has been fueled by a series of tragic incidents -- in several cases because people were denied timely care for non-covid-19 medical emergencies.
An official investigation released Sunday in Hohhot, the capital of China's Inner Mongolia region, blamed property management and community staff for not acting quickly enough to prevent the death of a 55-year-old woman in a sealed building after being told she had suicidal tendencies.
The woman fell from her 12th floor apartment on Friday evening, according to the report, which the Inner Mongolia Daily newspaper published on its social media account.
Public outrage over her death and her adult daughter's frantic attempts to get help earlier and then get out of the barricaded building immediately afterward prompted the investigation. The building had been locked down after two c0vid-19 cases were found about 10 days ago.
The woman's death followed that of a 3-year-old boy earlier last week from a gas leak at his locked-down residential compound in the city of Lanzhou in northwestern China.
In contrast, the mood was upbeat at the Beijing marathon. Participation was limited to city residents, apart from some invited runners. China's state media said that 30,000 people took part. They had to be vaccinated, not leave Beijing for seven days before the event and show proof of a negative virus test in the previous 24 hours.
Marathons are also planned later this month in Shanghai and Chengdu, a major city in southwestern China.
The number of new cases recorded nationwide rose to 4,200 on Saturday. About 1,400 were in southern China's Guangdong province, where a locked-down district in Guangzhou city was testing all 1.8 million residents this weekend. Another 700 were in Inner Mongolia.