It is probably smart that the nationalities of these expats are not being released because I can just see some people trying to blame a certain nationality for the MERS spread:
Dozens of foreigners have been put in quarantine for Middle East respiratory syndrome, but health authorities have yet to identify all of their nationalities, sources said Tuesday.
The Health and Welfare Ministry said that about 20 to 30 foreigners in Korea were ordered to be under home monitoring as they were suspected to have been exposed to MERS-confirmed patients.
As of Tuesday, more than 5,000 individuals in the country are being monitored at home for possible infection.
The exact number and nationality of those concerned has not been fully confirmed because the information of their home countries was not collected in the initial stages of the screening, according to the ministry.
“Once the MERS response team sends the list of those that they assume could be foreigners, we first identify based on names whether they are Korean nationals or not, and then proceed with the personal identification. So far, it may be uncertain, but there are believed to be around 20 to 30 expats under quarantine monitoring,” a Health Ministry official who is in charge of foreign affairs told The Korea Herald.
“The nationality identification is underway, but even if everything is confirmed, their nationalities will be kept confidential because of diplomatic issues,” she said, adding that some countries ask that the information not be released. [Korea Herald]
There is no doubt that when it comes to schooling in South Korea the competitiveness between teenagers can reach extreme levels to include high rates of suicide. This latest scandal is just another example of some of the negative affects of the hyper competitiveness with education in Korea:
Kim Jung-yoon, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, walks out of Incheon International Airport under protection of an acquaintance on Friday. (Yonhap)
Two weeks ago, a South Korean “math prodigy” made headlines across the country after claiming that she had been accepted into two prestigious American universities, Stanford and Harvard.
Kim Jung-yoon, a senior at Thomas Jefferson high School for Science and Technology in Virginia, rose to fame after media reported that the top-tier universities had competed to recruit her to their undergraduate programs and ended up creating a special shared program only for her to study at both schools.
According to the reports, the 18-year-old girl secured a rare chance to study at both schools and choose where to graduate from. Kim showed acceptance letters from the schools to back her claims.
Kim was featured on radio talk shows while her father contributed to the hype by conducting interviews with local news outlets.
The reports on Kim’s achievement sparked envy among Koreans who have been living in a climate where admission into top universities is seen as key to elevating their social status.
But about a week later, her whole story was unraveled, with both Harvard and Stanford universities denying the acceptance of the Korean student. The universities confirmed that there was no such joint program allowing a student to study at both schools, calling the acceptance letters provided by Kim forgeries.
Kim, who appears to have masterminded the whole furor herself, immediately went from being idolized to ridiculed, with her father apologizing last week for causing a stir and promising to take care of her mental health.
Putting aside the reason behind her scam, the scandal appeared to leave a bitter aftertaste here, as it bluntly illustrated the country’s avid obsession with academic elitism and a competitive media industry prone to lapses of judgment.
A 28-year-old student said he could sympathize with her as he understands what it feels like to fail to enter top-tier universities and to be treated like a “loser” in Korean society. [Korea Herald]
You can read the rest at the link, but the teenager came up with the lie initially probably to get her parents off of her back, but the dad then publicized it in the media. If he had not publicized it then this would have just been a family issue when the lie would have eventually been exposed. So the adults, the dad and the journalists who ran the story are more at fault in my opinion than the teenager. You would think before publishing a story the journalists would have picked up the phone to call the universities to make sure the claims are accurate.
As far as the over competitiveness within the Korean education system; I think it is better than what we see in many US schools where there is an extreme lack of educational competitiveness from both the kids and the parents.
It will probably take just one kid to get infected by MERS to cause all these schools to get shutdown again:
President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday visited a primary school in southern Seoul, which has reopened following the weeklong shutdown over the deadly MERS virus.
The visit is the latest in a series of public activities designed to allay public fears about the spread of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome that has killed 19 South Koreans.
The school had been closed for seven days last week as a precautionary measure against the virus. The school is located near Samsung Medical Center, which has been a major source of infections.
“I will do my best to ensure that (the virus) is brought to an end,” Park said in a meeting with students during a separate visit to a middle school in western Seoul. The middle school was closed for two days last week.
The visit came as South Korea reported four new cases of the viral respiratory illness that put the total number of people diagnosed with the disease at 154 — about half of them infected in Samsung Medical Center. [Yonhap]
Hopefully the spread of MERS is contained so the people in Pyeongtaek can get back to normal lives. Fortunately the ROK Air Force servicemember who tested positive for MERS recently has recovered:
A truck emits disinfectant smoke around Saint Mary’s Hospital in Pyeongtaek on Wednesday. South Korea’s first MERS patient spent three days in the hospital, spreading the disease to at least 30 others. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea—A city best known by many for its nearby U.S. military base and surrounding rice paddies became ground zero as a deadly virus rarely seen outside the Middle East began to spread through South Korea.
At St. Mary’s Hospital in a newly developing industrial area of Pyeongtaek, about 35 miles south of Seoul, doctors puzzled for three days in mid-May over the flulike condition of a 68-year-old man, who hadn’t disclosed at that point that he had recently returned from the Middle East.
The man left St. Mary’s and was later admitted to a larger hospital in Seoul, where he was ultimately diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome and was quarantined. But during that time in St. Mary’s, the man spread the MERS virus to more than 30 people. (…………………………)
A South Korean Defense Ministry official said one Korean man stationed at the Osan Air Base near Pyeongtaek who tested positive for MERS would be released on Thursday. The air base is close to the main U.S. military base of Camp Humphreys for which Pyeongtaek is known.
St. Mary’s was the first hospital named by the government as being part of the MERS outbreak. All patients, including MERS sufferers, have been moved to other hospitals. [Wall Street Journal via reader tip]
You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to learn why MERS spread so widely in various hospitals as well as why so few people have died compared to outbreaks in the Middle East.
I wonder what was so unique about this 14th patient that caused him to spread the virus to so many people? Was it because that he was a medical worker and not properly washing his hands before treating other patients?:
Samsung Medical Center in Seoul was partially shut down Sunday as more cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome were confirmed in the hospital. Meanwhile, the death toll across the country reached 15 and the number of those infected 145.
Hospital officials said they would stop receiving outpatients, suspend operations and restrict the visitors of hospitalized patients until June 24 as part of its efforts to contain the virus.
As of Sunday afternoon, 19 new cases were reported, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. Of them, 11 occurred at Samsung Medical Center, putting the total number of MERS patients from the hospital at 72.
The hospital’s move to temporarily close came after the authorities confirmed that an emergency worker who transferred patients to the hospital was infected with MERS. The 55-year-old was suspected of having been infected by the 14th patient, who is considered the “super spreader” for spreading the virus to more than 70 people. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link, but Samsung Medical Center is definitely taking a huge hit to their reputation with the spread of the MERS virus coming from their hospital.
This Council on Foreign Relations article makes the case that North Korea is preventing South Korea from being an affective middle power nation in regards to cyber security issues:
US Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Jaeho Yeom, President of Korea University, as he arrives to speak about cyber security and Internet freedom at Korea University in Seoul, Korea on May 18, 2015. (Saul Loeb/Reuters).
South Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries, which demonstrates the country’s embrace of cyber technologies. However, this commitment renders South Korea vulnerable to malicious cyber activities. As has happened in many countries, South Korea has scaled up its domestic cybersecurity efforts to address cyber threats, including the appointment in 2015 of a presidential adviser on cybersecurity. Despite increased attention on cyber defense and resilience, South Korea has not developed approaches that obviously stand out from equivalent efforts by other countries. South Korea struggles with the same problems as other nations, which means its domestic cybersecurity activities do not necessarily boost its middle power ambitions.
These ambitions also suffer because South Korea faces threats from North Korea that dominate South Korea’s cybersecurity agenda. Although North Korea is a cyber menace beyond the Korean peninsula, no other country bears the cyber burden Pyongyang imposes on South Korea. Indeed, in no other country is cybersecurity so interwoven as part of an existential security threat. This burden damages South Korea’s middle power aspirations in cyber affairs by highlighting South Korea’s vulnerabilities, forcing Seoul to prioritize North Korean cyber threats, and undermining the idea South Korea has effective strategies other countries can use.
South Korea’s close political, economic, and security relationship with the United States also affects its desire to be a middle power on cyber issues. A function of middle powers is to find ways to navigate international cooperation through the shoals of great-power competition. Middle powers should be—or perceived to be—sufficiently independent to be able to broker such cooperation. South Korea remains dependent on the United States in defending against North Korea, which colors perceptions of how autonomous South Korea can be on security issues. [Council on Foreign Relations]
You can read more at the link, but you would think that South Korea would be a great nation to learn from in regards to cyber security if they are constantly being probed and attacked by the North Koreans.
Here is an interesting read from a doctor who survived being infected with MERS by the 68 year old Korean man who initially brought the virus to South Korea after traveling in the Middle East:
Q. What were your symptoms?
A. In terms of my personal symptoms, there really isn’t much [to talk about]: a bit of muscle pain, indigestion, some coughing and a meager fever just high enough to fall after taking a few pills. The muscle pain wasn’t severe enough to take any painkillers. It hurt a little for about three to four days, but I got a lot better from the fifth. After a week, I started reading.
What was the most difficult pain to endure?
I don’t know whether my case can be comparable with that of other MERS patients. I was pretty healthy before the disease and also diagnosed pretty early, so it wasn’t as tough [as people assume]. I didn’t have trouble breathing. I’ve had the flu before, and if I were to grade the pain that ensued up to a 7, I’d say MERS was a 3 or a 4.
What was your daily schedule?
I had no sense of life during the first several days of treatment, but when I settled down later on I felt like my world was in tragedy. The television was one of my very few tools of connection with the outer world. I saw endless false rumors about MERS on the Internet, and being unable to speak up about the truth was what suffocated me the most. I was also worried about my own patients, and the false rumors that I treated them even after hearing the news I had MERS.
How are you feeling now?
I’m completely fine. I have a small cough, but I feel the same as I did before I had MERS.
As a doctor and former MERS patient, do you have anything to say about the current spread of the virus in Korea?
Fundamentally, I think doctors generally have to reflect upon their [lack of professionalism], because they were ignorant of MERS to begin with. In that sense, I think the outbreak may have been our [Korean doctors’] fault. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It looks like this is a pretty impressive robot that KAIST won this recent competition with:
On Saturday, Team KAIST from South Korea emerged as the winner of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) in Pomona, Calif., after its robot, an adaptable humanoid called DRC-HUBO, beat out 22 other robots from five different countries, winning the US $2 million grand prize. The robot’s “transformer” ability to switch back and forth from a walking biped to a wheeled machine proved key to its victory. Many robots lost their balance and collapsed to the ground while trying to perform tasks such as opening a door or operating a drill. Not DRC-HUBO. Its unique design allowed it to perform tasks faster and, perhaps more important, stay on its feet—and wheels.
“Bipedal walking [for robots] is not very stable yet,” Jun Ho Oh, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology who led the KAIST Team, told IEEE Spectrum. “One single thing goes wrong, the result is catastrophic.” He said a robot with a humanoid form has advantages when operating in a human environment, but he wanted to find a design that could minimize the risk of falls. “I thought about different things, and the simplest was wheels on the knees.”
You can read more at the link, but basically KAIST won the competition because this robot completed all the tasks that the organizers outlined for this competition.
It will be interesting to see what kind of turn out this Christian group has against the queer festival:
Non-affirming Christian groups are circulating a text message requesting support for a protest against the opening ceremony of the Queer Cultural Festival to show the world how “moral” Korea is.
“By filling Chunggye Square and the pedestrian way with protestors we show our Korean morals to the world,“ Professor Gil Won-Pyoung said in text message that he is encouraging people to circulate on Kakao, Facebook and other social media channels.
“We have a duty as Koreans to do our utmost best to show our morals, as Korea is the only country to prevent the trending flow of homosexuality,” he said.
The Korea Observer translated this message in full for our readers: [Korea Observer]
You can read the message at the link, but this guy is obviously delusional if he thinks Korea is stopping the trend of homosexuality. The openness of gays in Korea has shifted dramatically for the positive in the past two decades. Does this guy want Korea to be like Iran that hangs gays? If the participants are not bothering anyone with their festival then this Christian group should show some respect and just leave them alone.
