More restrictions are coming soon on the Korean public. Remember when the government said they didn’t care if daily COVID cases reached 10,000 they would not end the Living with COVID strategy? Well that did not age well:
South Korea’s new coronavirus cases and critically ill patients surged to fresh record highs Wednesday, with the government tipped to restore toughest virus curbs to contain the spread of infections.
The country added 7,850 new COVID-19 infections, including 7,828 local infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 536,495, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
Wednesday’s figure broke the previous record high of 7,174 cases last Wednesday. Daily virus cases have hovered in the range of 4,000-7,000 since early this month, weeks after the country began to ease the distancing rules from Nov. 1.
The number of critically ill patients hit an all-time high of 964, up from the previous record high of 906 on Tuesday.
Deaths from the virus rose by 70, bringing the total to 4,456. The record high death toll was 94 a day earlier. The fatality rate stood at 0.83 percent.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The trouble with fake news is always who gets to define what fake news is:
President Moon Jae-in stressed the need to develop a self-purification capacity to protect democracy from fake news at the U.S.-led virtual Summit for Democracy.
Presidential spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said Moon made the remarks Thursday night, Korea Standard time, at the closed-door leaders’ plenary session hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Moon said mankind has made unprecedented progress along with democracy, but is faced with the challenges of populism, extremism, inequality, polarization, fake news and hatred.
Calling for serious consultation to discuss ways to protect democracy, Moon stressed that personal liberty and freedom of expression must be guaranteed but they should be in harmony with freedom for everyone.
He underscored the need to guard against the harm of fake news while guaranteeing freedom of speech.
The president also said South Korea will actively join and contribute to efforts to promote democracy in Asia based on its experiences of achieving economic development and democracy. He did not mention China in his speech.
KBS World
You can read more at the link.
I don’t think this is discrimination because foreigners can attend the museum’s special programs if someone is willing to translate without interfering with the class. It seems like this is much to do about nothing:
A tea museum operated by South Korean cosmetics giant Amorepacific is found to have a rather controversial policy: It says no foreigners are allowed in its guided tours or tea classes because no interpretation services are provided.
Even if the foreigner is OK with not having an interpreter or has a native Korean speaker to help, the museum is apparently reluctant to accept the guest, warning, “The translation (by another guest) may be restricted if it disturbs other participants of the program.”
The museum in question – Osulloc Tea Museum – is one of Jeju Island’s most popular tourist spots.
Opened in September 2001 and located near the scenic Seokwang tea fields in Seogwipo, it is the first tea museum in Korea designed to introduce and promote the nation’s traditional tea culture. As of 2020, more than 15 million people have visited the venue, it says, with some 20-30 percent of those being foreign visitors.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
It looks like South Korea’s vaccine pass system is having some early struggles:
The government’s digital vaccine pass system malfunctioned for the second day on Tuesday, leading to a number of access failures during lunch time despite the addition of emergency servers to deal with heavy user traffic.
COOV, a government smartphone application that authenticates users’ vaccination status by QR codes, along with affiliated third party programs, such as Naver and Kakao talk, has been plagued with major connection issues since Monday, the first day of the government’s vaccine pass enforcement, as a result of heavy traffic.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said it added emergency servers to the system overnight to deal with increased traffic, but many workers and restaurants in Seoul’s office-heavy districts continued to experience outages for the second day around lunch time.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The COVID daily death toll is the number that really needs to be focused on more than the case numbers the media seems to like to highlight the most. It appears that the elderly are passing away due to the efficacy of the vaccine wearing off after six months:
President Moon Jae-in called Saturday for speeding up booster shots for the elderly as the country struggles to tackle the fast spread of coronavirus infections, including cases of the new omicron variant.
The country added 6,977 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total caseload to 510,538, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
Daily infections soared to a record high of 7,174 cases on Wednesday and remained above 7,000 for the following two days.
The number of critically ill patients came to 856 on Saturday, up four from a day ago, while the death toll hit a daily high of 80, pushing the total up to 4,210.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Considering the Moon administration’s chummy relationship with the thugs in Pyongyang, it should be no surprise they will not take a stand against the democracy crackdown in Hong Kong, crushing of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the aggressive territorial expansion activities of the CCP:
South Korea is seeking to play its “role as the previous host nation” of the Winter Olympics, First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun said Thursday, alluding that Seoul is less likely join the US in a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Games.
Choi made the remarks during an interview with local radio station TBS, stressing that the upcoming Beijing Olympics are a “relay of Northeast Asian Olympics from PyeongChang to Tokyo and Beijing and are very meaningful.”
His remarks suggest that Seoul is tilting toward opting out of the US-led diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games slated for Feb. 4 to 20. But he clarified the “government has not yet made any decisions.”
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
According to experts the COVID spread is likely going to get much worse before it gets better in South Korea:
The government’s COVID-19 quarantine measure of home treatment for non-critical patients is feared to have increased infections among family members as well as the number of serious cases, health experts said Wednesday.
Korea Times
This concern was raised as the country’s daily new number of coronavirus cases soared to a record high of 7,175 for Tuesday, a sharp rise of 2,221 from the previous day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). Health experts are now saying the number of daily infections could reach 10,000 in a few weeks.
The number of critically ill patients also hit an all-time high of 840.
Along with the high numbers, the government’s policy of expanding home treatment for COVID-19 patients ― a measure to counter a shortage of hospital beds ― has fueled concerns because a patient’s family members have to stay at home under self-quarantine and may contract the virus.
In Seoul alone, more than 8,800 people were under home treatment as of Tuesday.
The experts warned that at-home treatment could lead to secondary infections among the patient’s family members and thus further fuel the increasing trend in cases here.
You can read more at the link, but this at home treatment policy may help explain why Japan has such a significantly lower COVID spread than nearby South Korea.
