South Korea and COVID-19

An article whose link I saw on Instapundit caught my attention:

How South Korea Lost Control of Its Coronavirus Outbreak
by Suki Kim

Excerpt (and pardon Kim's unnecessary capitalization of "presidency"):

This matters because of who Moon is and what his Presidency means for South Koreans. In 2017, Moon, a former human-rights lawyer and Democratic Party candidate, was elected in an emergency election following the impeachment and removal of President Park Geun-hye, a conservative who is now serving a twenty-five-year prison sentence for abuse of power and corruption. Public anger, which culminated in massive street protests by millions of Koreans, had roots in the 2014 sinking of the ferry M.V. Sewol, in which nearly three hundred teen-agers drowned. The accident revealed fundamental failures in the Korean governmental system and neglect by the head of state, who was absent in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. The National Assembly held hearings to investigate President Park’s whereabouts during what they called “the golden time” when lives might have been saved. During his campaign, Moon pledged that a President and the Blue House must serve as the “control tower” during national disasters. That promise now haunts his Presidency.

On January 26th, three days after China’s lockdown on Wuhan, the Korean Medical Association, the country’s largest association of doctors, urged the government to temporarily bar entry to all travellers arriving from mainland China. Moon’s government did not heed that warning. Instead, it donated a million and a half face masks to China. Moon’s defenders point out that the World Health Organization does not recommend a travel ban for virus prevention, but Dr. Choi Jae-wook, professor of Preventive Medicine at Koryo University and the chairman of the K.M.A.’s scientific-verification committee, told me that countries must adapt when facing a potential pandemic. “In South Korea, there were fewer than ten infected back then and they had all come through China,” Dr. Choi said. “At the time, there were seventy thousand people coming from China per day. Sure, they can check for any sign of fever at the airport, but many show no symptoms, and some get sick only afterward. The foremost priority for any infectious disease is to stop contagion, and the most basic solution in this case was a restriction.”

Four days later, on January 30th, the W.H.O. declared a global health emergency, and several countries, including the United States and Australia, placed a temporary ban on travellers from China. Other nearby countries, including Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Singapore, quickly did so as well. As of today, more than seventy nations have imposed a temporary ban. In South Korea, Moon faced his “control-tower” moment, the brief “golden-time” window when his response might have limited the country’s outbreak. He declined to impose a full travel ban. Japanese Prime Minister Abe declined as well. Both leaders had plans in place for spring summit visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping. China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and Chinese make up about half of the seventeen million tourists who visit the country annually. On February 4th, five days after the W.H.O. declared an emergency, South Korea enacted a limited ban, which barred entry by any foreigners who had visited China’s Hubei Province in the previous two weeks. (Due to China’s lockdown of the province, no one was travelling in and out of Hubei anyway.) Moon’s critics dismissed the limited step as an empty gesture to placate Koreans demanding a full ban.

[...]

Three years after Moon campaigned on a promise of governing more effectively during an emergency than Park, the incumbent’s response to one has resembled that of his predecessor.

I think South Korea has generally done what it can in the face of this epidemic, but it does bother me that the ROK government has been, under the current leftist administration, going through the routine motions of kissing China's ass while castigating Japan. Korea used to be a vassal state under China, but a collective amnesia of the Korean people has led to a mass version of selective outrage. Part of the selectiveness—as the above article points out—has to do with China's status as South Korea's biggest trading partner. This creates an uncomfortable parallel with North Korea because, for the North, China is also its biggest benefactor (if not exactly a full-on "trading partner"). Just as the United Kingdom is now busy realigning its interests post-Brexit, South Korea would do well to realign itself, too. Reliance on China is often little more than a devil's bargain. The US is pivoting toward India, as it should have done decades ago. Will Korea wake up, see the trends, and realign itself for its own good? Or is it really that smitten with its former master?