Yoon gets nosebleed from apparent overwork during Cabinet meeting

President Yoon Suk Yeol bled from the nose while leading a Cabinet meeting at the presidential office on Monday, a government official said, attributing it to his intense schedule during and after his trip to New York last week.

Yoon was in New York from Monday to Friday, attending the U.N. General Assembly and meeting with 47 heads of state on the sidelines, including through 41 bilateral summits.

“The president undertook a murderous schedule of bilateral meetings in New York and continued the intense schedule with public livelihood events immediately after returning home, so it appears he overworked,” the official said.

The nosebleed occurred during the closed-door portion of the Cabinet meeting after Yoon relayed the results of his New York trip on live television.

In the broadcast remarks, he instructed the government to take active measures to follow up on his meetings with the world leaders, citing his efforts to bring the 2030 World Expo to Busan and expand the global market for South Korean businesses.

“I emphasized that the Busan Expo will be a value-oriented Expo that will change the paradigm of the international community from one of competition to one of solidarity,” he said.

“I explained that it will be an Expo of solidarity where, rather than each nation showing off and competing in the achievements of science and technology and cutting-edge industries, the entire world shares the achievements, and that each country will gain an opportunity to make a big leap in their science and technology and industry through the Busan Expo,” he added.

Yoon has been at the forefront of the government’s campaign to bring the World Expo to the southeastern port city. Busan is in a three-way competition against Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Rome, Italy, with the winner set to be decided by a vote among member countries of the Bureau International des Expositions in late November.

During the meeting, Yoon also listed the various business projects around the world where South Korean companies and nationals are dedicating themselves, from nuclear power plant projects in the Czech Republic and Hungary to new city construction projects in Iraq and Kyrgyzstan.

“We must not think vaguely that what we want will come to us if we just make a passing effort,” he said. “We must have a conviction about our goal and give our all in order to achieve it. The global market and the Expo will ultimately become ours if we throw ourselves into them and run with the conviction that they are ours.”

Yoon also referred to a set of revisions passed by the National Assembly last week to enhance the rights of teachers in classrooms. The revisions were set to be handled during the Cabinet meeting.

“Only when the authority of teachers is guaranteed are the rights of students to learn and their human rights also guaranteed,” he said.

The four revisions, known as the “teacher rights restoration bills,” unanimously passed the parliament last week in the wake of a series of suicides by teachers that sparked criticism that the country’s school system and related laws fail to protect teachers’ authority in classrooms.