Here is some good news in a week of bad coronavirus news for South Korea:

No deaths were caused by Typhoon Bavi’s passage by Korea Wednesday and Thursday, but its strong winds damaged hundreds of houses and other structures.    
   
A 34-year-old resident of Paju, Gyeonggi, was injured on a street in his neighborhood in Wadong-dong around 5:46 a.m. on Thursday when a metal object dislodged from the top of an apartment building hit his head. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The number of coronavirus cases continues to grow in South Korea, but despite this there have been no new deaths which hardly gets reported:

Months after South Korea successfully flattened its coronavirus curve, the country, yet again at a crossroads in the face of the most daily new infections since early March, is inching closer to adopting the toughest-ever virus infection measures.

South Korea added 441 more COVID-19 cases Thursday, bringing the nation’s total caseload to 18,760, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Thursday’s daily tally marks the largest since March 7 when the country was reeling from a large outbreak in the southeastern city of Daegu and its neighboring North Gyeongsang Province tied to the minor religious sect, Shincheonji.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

In the entire greater Seoul area there is 319 ICU beds for patients with severe COVID and now 300 are filled up:

Health authorities Wednesday vowed to find more hospital beds for seriously ill coronavirus patients as more of Korea’s older population contract the disease, saying there were only 19 such beds left in the greater Seoul area by Tuesday evening.  
   
The promise came as the nation counted 320 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to data released Wednesday morning by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). Monday’s toll was 280 cases.    
   
More than two-thirds of Tuesday’s case load came from the Seoul metropolitan area encompassing Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi, as a cluster from the Sarang Jeil Church in Seongbuk District, central Seoul — a controversial Presbyterian church mostly attended by older conservatives — continues to swell.  
   
Yoon Tae-ho, an official on the Korean central government’s Covid-19 command center, said during a Wednesday press briefing that more people in their 60s or above were contracting the virus lately, which was leading to an uptick of seriously ill patients. The older demographic is generally considered to be at higher risk for getting really sick from the coronavirus.  
  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the claim of running out of beds is slightly misleading. This is because more beds can be allocated, but it will take away from the hospital’s ability to handle other patients for elective procedures. This is an issue that hospitals in the U.S. have had to deal with which can be financially troublesome because elective procedures generally make more money for the hospital compared to COVID patients.

There is no evidence that the European, Middle East, North American strain of the coronavirus is more infectious, but it is interesting how this strain has now become the prevalent form of the virus in South Korea:

South Korea has been detecting more of a mutated strain of the new coronavirus that swept North America, Europe and the Middle East, health authorities said Wednesday, although there is no evidence that the mutation is more infectious. 

Based on the type of amino acid of a certain gene, the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies the novel coronavirus into seven strains — S, V, L, G, GH, GR and the rest. 

The GH strain, which is most common in North America, Europe and the Middle East, was first found in South Korea in April. 

Of a total of 685 patients, the number of patients infected with the GH strain stood at 169 in May, 223 in June, 47 in July and 85 in August, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

The mutated strain accounted for 77.4 percent of the 685 patients, the KCDC said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

President Moon has fighting words for the doctors that have gone on strike this week:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in sent a warning message on Aug. 24 to physician groups that launched a collective strike to protest plans to create new public health colleges and raise the admissions cap for medical schools.

“We will have no choice but to respond sternly to the collective use of force in violation of the law, such as strikes and walkouts,” Moon said, describing the current situation as a “desperate moment where the number of people infected [with COVID-19] could skyrocket anywhere at any time if we let down our guard even a little.”Presiding over a meeting of senior secretaries and aides at the Blue House that day, Moon said, “We would like the medical community to refrain from collective action.

Collective action that holds the public’s life hostage will not gain support at a time when we need to be harnessing our national capacities to stop the virus from spreading.”“One can oppose or criticize government policy, but it cannot cross the line of what is lawful,” he stressed in his first public message directed at the Korea Intern Resident Association (KIRA). (………………..)

“A Level 3 upgrade is by no means an easy decision to make. Daily life would come to a stop, jobs would collapse, and we would have to suffer through a truly enormous economic setback. We could even see a collapse of the healthcare system.

Hankyoreh

If President Moon is so concerned about his doomsday scenario then why doesn’t he scrap his medical reform plan? Additionally Moon in the article also hinted at putting more journalists and protesters in jail that don’t agree with his administration:

”Moon further hinted at plans for a stern response toward obstruction of disease prevention efforts and the spreading of fake news, which he referred to as “antisocial criminal acts.”“No religious freedom, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of expression can be proclaimed if it means causing such enormous harm to the South Korean public,” he declared, adding that he would “clearly establish the strict fairness of public authorities.”

You can read more at the link.

What gets me the most about this case is that when the sexual assault allegation occurred the ROK Foreign Ministry relocated the diplomat to the Philippines of all places:

 A New Zealand advocate for sexual assault victims has expressed disappointment towards the South Korean foreign minister’s recent apology over sexual abuse allegations against a Korean diplomat in the Oceanian country, according to a news report Tuesday.

A former New Zealand employee at South Korea’s Embassy in Wellington has accused a senior South Korean diplomat of groping his body on three occasions in 2017, a case that has drawn attention after the country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern raised the issue in last month’s phone talks with President Moon Jae-in. 

On Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha in a meeting with senior officials made an apology over the case. According to the minister’s office, Kang stated that the case has been “a diplomatic burden” for the government and apologized “for causing concern to the public.”

Louise Nicholas, a New Zealand advocate for victims of sexual assault, however, expressed frustration with Kang’s apology for it not addressing the victim himself. 

“He’s quite distraught over (the apology) and I don’t blame him at all,” Nicholas, who has been supporting the victim, said in an interview with New Zealand broadcaster Newshub.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.