What feeds the success of the Korean coronavirus? And relapse – POLICY

Michael Breen is the author of "The New Koreans" (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017).

SEOUL: You would think that all South Koreans would have COVID-19 now. With a population almost as large as that of England in a combined living space the size of Belgium, they are more clustered than almost all other people.

And yet, despite this drawback, they have managed to control the epidemic in the past three months with a testing and tracing strategy that has avoided the need for a crash.

Only less than 11,000 people They have contracted the virus since the first case reported on January 20. This translates to one patient for 4,450 people. Of this number, 260 people have died and more than 1,000 remain isolated.

Korea's strategy of targeted testing and aggressive contact tracing has been presented as a successful example of how to contain the virus, even when other countries have been slow to adopt it.

One month before the epidemic, Korean leaders also conducted a simulation based on a pandemic scenario. So they were ready when the real thing happened.

In part, Korea has done well because it has experience with such events and because as a society, people were already used to wearing face masks and using a hand sanitizer, a type of preparation difficult to reproduce.

But they are still not clear. With an increase in the number of cases in the past week, just as the country has relaxed regulations, the authorities are anticipating a second wave and increasing their response by several levels.

While the first wave of infections focused mainly on the southern city of Daegu, last week, more than 100 new cases They are related to Itaewon, a shopping and entertainment district of Seoul. Korean centers for disease control and prevention say the group is related to a 29-year-old man who tested positive on May 6 after visiting gay clubs and bars in the early hours of May 2.

And this time, the follow-up strategy does not work as well. Given social attitudes toward homosexuality in Korea, where even political liberals tend to be socially conservative, many people known to have been in the region seem to be afraid to answer government calls for testing.

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So what's behind it? The success story? Culture, pragmatism, luck?

It can be a combination of all three. Part of the explanation for Korea's success so far is the fact that it has entered the crisis well prepared.

Korea's disease control system was refined after its experience with Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015. A key legal provision introduced at the time gave the government the right to overrule laws on privacy, which they are strong in Korea in such cases.

One month before the epidemic, Korean leaders also conducted a simulation based on a pandemic scenario. So they were ready when the real thing happened.

The country's well-developed biotechnology industry was also essential. He quickly took action to produce test kits, and health workers soon assessed 15,000 people a day. Many of the 695,000 people who have been tested to date have done so in driving facilities where there is no need to get out of the car.

While health information has been made public so that people can avoid the areas where infected people were, the authorities keep patients' identities confidential, which includes guarantees for illegal immigrants.

People sit in a park in Seoul. South Korea was better prepared for the pandemic than most other countries | Ed Jones / AFP via Getty Images

This was unfortunate for many small businesses, and even unfair, since the buildings, shops and restaurants identified had often been disinfected when people decided to avoid them.

However, at this stage in the fight against COVID-19, transparency is essential and takes precedence over economic damage. The approach has not been questioned.

The country's highly developed e-commerce and home delivery systems have also helped ease the pain. No panic, no shelves without toilet paper. Orders placed late at night appeared at the people's door at dawn.

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Beyond Korean infrastructure and more tangible markers of preparation, the country's success, especially in relation to the growing disaster in Europe, quickly gave way to the theory of politics and religion.

Koreans are obedient, said players (including Korean players), thanks to their traditions of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Their recent experience with authoritarianism and nationalism has also made them more willing to accept the intrusion of surveillance technology and tight government control, others have suggested.

It is an enticing but misleading theory.

Koreans are as educated in their own freedom as anyone else. And, like most people, they accepted small intrusions to reduce the risk of infection.

Certainly, there has always been an ethical imperative of obedience in Korea. As one psychologist once explained to me, "You Westerners have a tradition of rebellion that started with Adam and Eve. But in our culture, to follow the orders of our older brothers at the marriage of those whom our parents choose for us, we have always been forced to obey. "Confucianism has made a virtue of self-suppression.

Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. He also has one of the highest suicide rates.

The courteous manners of Koreans can make them appear obedient and deferential (just as English manners have given the idea, at least among Koreans, that all English are "gentlemen"), but everything is not not as it seems At first. Koreans can nod their heads in appreciation when you voice your opinion, but that doesn't mean they don't think you are an idiot.

In short, Confucius left the building some time ago. Far from being obedient, Koreans are on the contrary so frantic and disobedient that it takes an effort to make them accept, a point, by the way, which explains why the regime in North Korea is so monstrous . (The rupture will occur when the regime no longer has the means or the will to kill its own).

In free South Korea, this fragility has resulted in a vision of democracy which postulates that it is up to politicians to fulfill the will of the people, rather than acting as delegates representing the majority of their voters.

Since "people" really don't exist, that leaves a lot of latitude. But it does mean that the government is petrified to come into conflict with "public sentiment": the perceived will of people is expressed differently in the media, online comments and street protests.

A true error with COVID-19 could have resulted in a serious indictment. Such a perspective naturally concentrates presidential thinking on results.

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In addition to frequent use When it comes to face masks, with Korean air quality among the worst in the world, another cultural factor is at play in the country's response to the crisis: unhappiness.

Korea has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. He also has one of the highest suicide rates. The statistics here combine to send a great cry of misery. The turning point came more than 20 years ago with the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, which led to massive layoffs and the collapse of thousands of small businesses.

Until then, Koreans had been brought up to see their role in life as a contribution to the nation, and the nation's stated ultimate goal was economic strength. Love or happiness, or even individual economic success, was not the goal. The purpose of your life was to serve that group goal.

The result speaks for itself. Today, Korea is an incredibly developed country whose people are more miserable than their poor parents who worked 30 years ago.

This has side effects. Koreans, being strongly group oriented, are chained by what they think others think of them. This, and the tendency of parents and the elderly to interfere with life decisions, such as career and partner choices, means that many people live frustrated and dissatisfied lives.

Seoul police wearing full protective clothing | Jung Yeon-Je / AFP via Getty Images

Combine that feeling of being watched, with a strong sense of hierarchy, a bad habit of classifying everything and everyone, and a new dog-eat-dog competition, and you also get a high degree of fatalism.

Where the optimistic American can strut on the street, confident that everything will be fine, the fatalistic Korean imagines spreading the virus. So you are already motivated to do what you already know: put on a face mask once you are out of the house and use the hand sanitizer that is on your desk, at the door of your building, in restaurants and in wherever you go.