Civil servant's death highlights world's lowest birth rate

Seoul

TRYING to raise the world's lowest birth rate is among the missions of South Korea's welfare ministry - a challenge starkly illustrated when one of its own working mothers died at her office.

The 34-year-old woman was an elite employee who had passed the highest category of the highly competitive civil service entrance exams.

A mother of three, she had only returned from maternity leave a week before her death last month, and immediately went back to working 12-hour days.

She returned to the office on the Saturday. On the Sunday, she was there again at five in the morning to finish early and take care of her children later in the day, according to her colleagues.

Instead she suffered a heart attack and they…