Friday, April 02, 2021

South Korea continues its plunge over the "wokeness" cliff

What happens in the US eventually happens in Korea.  Apparently, South Korea will be instituting its very own utterly useless COVID "passport" system, or so says the following article quoted by ROK Drop:

SOUTH KOREA ANNOUNCES INTRODUCTION OF DIGITAL COVID PASSPORT SYSTEM

South Korea will introduce a digital certification system to verify a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status through a smartphone application this month, amid the government’s efforts to boost people’s participation in the public vaccine program, the prime minister said Thursday.

“The people will be able to experience a sense of return to normality from a vaccine passport or green card systems,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said during a daily interagency meeting on the government’s coronavirus response.

A vaccine doesn't guarantee you won't catch the virus, as some articles have already pointed out.  A passport doesn't certify anything.  But here in Korea, where there's no Fourth-Amendment right to privacy, it's not as surprising or as painful to lose a "freedom" one never had to begin with.  Back in 2013, when I worked for Daegu Catholic University, my medical records were made known to our department's office staff.  When I found that out, I was furious, but there was nothing to be done.  This is Korea.

However, this source says the ROK Constitution does guarantee a right to privacy:

The Right to Privacy is constructed as a fundamental right that is protected by the Constitution. It prevents the state from looking into the private life of [citizens and] provides for the protection from the state's intervention or prohibition of free conduct of private living.

In that case, (1) maybe I should be upset,* and (2) doesn't that make a South Korean COVID "passport" unconstitutional, the same as it does in the States?**

UPDATE: Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced a bill to strike down COVID passports in the US.  Good luck, Congresswoman.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced a proposal on April 1 that would ban COVID-19 vaccination mandates as well as so-called vaccine passports.

The We Will Not Comply Act would ban documents that show who has been vaccinated or recently tested negative for the CCP virus. The concept of requiring certification has been rejected by pro-privacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Greene’s measure likely won’t be taken up by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, and if it is, it will be unlikely to pass. It would “prevent any business engaged in interstate commerce from discriminating against a person based on their COVID-19 vaccine status,” cut off federal funding for a vaccine mandate on employees, a vaccine mandate for students attending schools, and mandates on organizations or sport—or “any person who expresses religious objection,” according to a statement from her office.

It would also prohibit the government from requiring a CCP virus vaccine to get a U.S. passport and “prevent Airline companies from denying someone from flying based on their COVID-19 vaccination status,” as well as “create the ability to sue if a person has been discriminated against on the basis of their vaccination status or mask compliance,” her office wrote.

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*Perhaps in the ideal, there might be a right to privacy in South Korea.  I'll need to reread the relevant parts of the ROK Constitution.  But on a practical level, as my time in Daegu proved, there's no right to privacy, and when you think about it, the same is true in the States:  technology long ago outstripped our ability to make laws that keep up with its development, and there's effectively no right to privacy, no matter what the law supposedly says.  Whether in South Korea or in the United States, we all now live under the presumption that we're being watched and recorded at all times, and it's scary how we've gotten used to that.  How many of us are prepared to go out, right now, and physically tear down the structures and facilities that violate our privacy—starting with our cell phones?  If we're honest, the answer is:  almost none of us are.  We're all complacent sheep, unwilling to rebel, and that's a shame.

**Democrats would argue that the "passport" is perfectly constitutional, but they've been pissing on the Constitution for decades.



2 comments:

Motorrad said...

I'm not averse to vaccination "passports" per se, but I am adamantly against mandated smartphone applications. I have an old, but regularly updated, yellow WHO card that records all my vaccinations. My major aerospace employer provided it when I first started traveling to Korea and India for work. But I don't trust any of the big tech companies to secure my medical data. So far I'm hearing the US plan would give a choice between hard copy and electronic. But I'm sure Google has their lobbyists working overtime to get the paper option killed.

Kevin Kim said...

My problem with the passports is the violation of the right to privacy. Why should strangers be privy to any aspect of my medical status? But I also think the potential for monitoring movements is a huge problem, and that's basically yet another privacy issue.