Category: Korea-General Topics

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. 

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.

Korea Times

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.

South Korea’s surge in COVID cases just continues to get worse:

 South Korea’s new coronavirus cases hit an all-time high on Wednesday as infections continued to surge around the country amid waning immunity and colder weather.

The country confirmed 7,175 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total caseload to 489,484, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). 

The daily tally was up by 2,221 from a day earlier, the biggest daily jump since the pandemic began early last year. The previous record of 5,352 was set on Saturday. The average daily infection cases were 5,012 for the seven days ending Tuesday.

Infections were rising especially among older adults who suffer a drop in vaccine efficacy and children who have yet to receive their first shots, according to the KDCA. 

The number of critically ill COVID-19 patients also jumped to a record high of 840, up 66 from a day ago, putting further strain on the country’s already overwhelmed health care system. More than 83 percent of them were aged over 60.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but with waning efficacy of vaccine shots it makes me wonder if the Moon administration will eventually require booster shots in order to enter certain businesses?

By the way something that continues to be very unusual is how in Japan, just a short distance away the seven day daily COVID case average is 107 in a country with well over double to population of the ROK.

Here is some possible good news that the Biden administration may not actually be preparing to go along with the Moon administration’s attempt to declare an end to the Korean War:

American officials have started calling the end-of-war declaration, a signature diplomatic goal of the Moon Jae-in administration, an end-of-war statement, which may not be good news for Seoul.  
   
“’Declaration’ or ‘statement,’ what really matters is what is stated inside,” a former diplomat told the JoongAng Ilbo on Monday. “But still, calling it a statement instead of a declaration does appear to lower its official standing.”  
   
Semantics are always important in diplomacy, and this choice of words seems to signify a reluctance by the U.S. to sign on to the idea, or its intention to downplay it.   
   
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was one of the first to refer to the declaration as a statement on Nov. 17. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The Moon administration is messing with the hagwons, watch out there is going to be some angry ajummas:

Students and parents are protesting the government’s new vaccine pass system, saying it infringes upon adolescents’ right not to get vaccinated.    
   
Starting Monday, Korea’s vaccine pass systemwas expanded to hagwon (cram school) libraries, PC bang (internet cafes), public study rooms, movie theatres, restaurants and cafes — but only for adults using them.    
   
From Feb. 1, 12 to 18-year-olds — people born between the years 2003 and 2009 — will require vaccine passes to enter those places, unless they submit a negative PCR test that was conducted within the previous 48 hours, according to the Central Disaster Management Headquarters’ briefing Friday.    
   
In protest, an 18-year-old student in Daegu filed an online petition on the Blue House website Nov. 26, writing that the regulation is discriminatory against students and their right to an education.   (…..)

“The government has decided to more strongly advise vaccinations for minors because the situation has grown that much more dangerous over the past month,” said Son Young-rae, senior epidemiological strategist at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters.  
   
“As the necessity grew for more people to be vaccinated, we have decided to expand the vaccine pass system to include individuals from ages 12 to 18.”  
   
Son added that the infection rate for Covid among minors surpassed that for adults over the last four weeks.  
   
According to the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, 99.7 out of every 100,000 minors were infected from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1, compared to 76.9 out of every 100,000 adults.    
   
Yet, teens and their parents say that requiring a vaccine pass in places like hagwon, which are considered essential facilities for nearly all middle and high school students in Korea, is unfair.    
   
“Enforcing a vaccine pass system in hagwon is a violation of the children’s right to learn,” said Ms. Lee, 47, a mother of two in Seongbuk District, central Seoul.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Remember when the Moon administration said that they didn’t care if cases hit 10,000 when they began their “Living with COVID” strategy. It didn’t take long for them to back away from this strategy and the cases were no where near 10,000:

South Korea’s new coronavirus cases fell below 5,000 for the first time in three days Monday as the country reimposed toughened social distancing rules amid concerns over the spread of the omicron variant.

The country added 4,325 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total caseload to 477,358, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). 

Daily infections soared to a record high of 5,352 cases on Saturday before falling to 5,127 on Sunday. 

On Monday, the government began four-week stricter social distancing rules to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus and the omicron variant.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.