Tag: South Korea

I am surprised this did not happen sooner:

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said Wednesday that it will suspend all routine visa services from Thursday for an unspecified period of time in keeping with the State Department’s measures to respond to the new coronavirus outbreak.

The embassy said in a statement that it “will cancel all routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa appointments” starting Thursday. However, this will not affect the existing visa waiver program, and services to U.S. citizens will continue.

The visa waiver enables Korean nationals to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

If people from Europe are spreading the coronavirus so much you would think the Moon administration would either restrict travel or put people into mandatory quarantine:

In Busan, a 24-year-old Korean male who recently traveled around Europe, including Italy, which now has the second-highest number of infections after China, tested positive for the coronavirus on March 10 upon his return to Korea, Busan officials said.

The man left for Europe on Feb. 9, returned to Korea on March 4 and started showing symptoms from March 9. Nevertheless, he dined at a restaurant, went to a coffee shop and rode the Busan subway until he finally tested positive on March 10.  

A 44-year-old Korean woman in Gwangju likewise traveled to Europe for two weeks earlier this month and came down with a cough last Wednesday. She arrived in Korea last Thursday but was able to pass through customs at Incheon International Airport because her temperature was within the normal range, said Gwangju officials. She took an airport limousine from Incheon to Gwangju, which was a four-hour ride, and mostly stayed home till she tested positive for the virus last Saturday. 

In Seoul, a French female national who arrived in Korea on March 9 started showing symptoms of a cough last Wednesday and turned out positive on Friday. Her male Korean friend was also tested and turned out positive Saturday. Seoul officials believe the French national contracted the disease from her father in France, who informed his daughter last Thursday that he was infected. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This has to be the stupidest way we have seen the coronavirus spread in South Korea:

A new cluster of coronavirus has emerged at a church in South Korea after members used a saltwater spray — which they believed prevented the spread of the virus — but used the same spray bottle on members without properly disinfecting the nozzle, health officials acknowledged Monday.

Officials in the city of Seongnam, located in the Gyeonggi Province south of Seoul, said 40 additional members of the River of Grace Community Church have tested positive for COVID-19 after six members, including the pastor and his wife, were confirmed in the past week to have the virus.

All of those infected may have attended the same service on March 8, according to the Yonhap News Agency. (……..)

“This made it inevitable for the virus to spread,” he added. “They did so out of the false belief that saltwater kills the virus.”

Fox News via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but I don’t know what is worse, the minister believing that salt water kills COVID-19 or all the followers blindly following his instructions to use the spray bottle on each other?

You would think someone in the congregation would think this is idiotic.

Remember when the election law for proportional representation seats was passed to help the Korean left remain in power in the parliament. Well here is their next phase in ensuring they maintain power, make left wing satellite political parties to increase proportional representation seats for the Korean left:

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has decided to take part in an initiative to form a liberal satellite political party designed to win more proportional representation seats in the April 15 general election. In a vote of all party members conducted last week, about 241,000 members cast ballots and 74 percent supported the move. (……..)

DPK Chairman Lee Hae-chan defended the party’s decision, saying it was an inevitable choice to stop the conservative opposition United Future Party (UFP) from becoming the largest party and blocking reform measures pushed by the Moon Jae-in administration. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but it is very clear that the Korean left will use every trick legal or illegal to win the parliamentary elections next month.

This sounds more like a political campaign event for everyone involved to show they are “doing something” especially for President Moon who faces a parliamentary election in April:

President Moon Jae-in is seeking a summit to come up with international cooperation in COVID-19 responses, actively pushing for a G20 teleconference over the issue. 

The proposal comes as the number of novel coronavirus infections is spiking across the world, and has gained backing from key members such as France and the U.S., according to Cheong Wa Dae.

During a March 13 phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, President Moon proposed that they seek a teleconference among G20 members, which the former agreed to, the presidential office said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I find it hard to believe that health authorities around the world can’t work together on the coronavirus issue without a G-20 meeting.

I have noticed more articles in the U.S. media highlighting South Korea’s success testing for the coronavirus:

Dr. Ogan Gurel, who got his medical degree from Columbia in New York and moved to Seoul 10 years ago, cites drive-by testing as one of “a panoply of measures” designed to stop the virus from overwhelming this country of 51 million people.

“There is no silver bullet,” says Gurel, who teaches medicine and provides scientific advice. “Individually, people might suffer, but in aggregate they end up with qualitative stabilization.” That is to say, for the overall population the disease is brought under control.

The proof is in the numbers showing new cases in South Korea decreasing steadily–just 110 on Thursday, the lowest in more than two weeks, while 177 were declared cured and sent home. All told, the number of cases totals 7,979, but the general feeling sense is the worst is over.

“Korea is setting a good example for the U.S.,” said Jang Sung-eun, who still rides the subways to work every day while many of her colleagues try to work from home. “They say we Koreans are rather effective in dealing with the problem.”

Such guarded optimism reflects a discernible shift in national mood from the near-panic that engulfed the country after the virus was discovered to be emanating from a church in the city of Daegu, 170 miles southeast of Seoul. The church was one of dozens run by the secretive Shincheonji sect, whose leader, Lee Man-hee, has proclaimed himself the embodiment of Jesus Christ.

“There was some resistance among them to testing,” says Gurel, but by now almost all the sect’s 230,000 members have been checked. Most of those suffering from the disease were members of the church or caught the virus from members who may have passed it on through two or three others, who in turn transmitted it to still more contacts.

Korean self-discipline and community cohesiveness explain much of the success in coming to terms with an illness that remains almost out of control elsewhere.

Daily Beast

You can read more at the link, but these articles don’t mention how travel from China was not restricted which helped the spread of the virus in South Korea. Likewise it took time for South Korea to get their testing and quarantine strategy in place after the initial shock of the mass infections in Daegu.

The U.S. is now experiencing the initial shock Koreans felt last month and now authorities are scrambling to implement their own testing and quarantine strategy. There is definitely best practices that can be learned from South Korea, but they will have to be adapted to deal with a far larger & diverse population, spread out over a huge landmass, with different privacy laws.