AFTER THE PEAK?
lic health and/or the government,” Cooper says. “It also allows the government to implement more drastic measures.”
Julien Turcotte-Novosedlik, 33, is an expat Ottawan teaching English in Ulsan, about 70 km southeast of Daegu. He notes that residents there are much calmer now than at the outbreak’s outset.
“People are mindful that the virus is still out there, but they aren’t necessarily letting it hamper them. Life has been returning, with people following good hygiene rules: wearing a mask and washing hands.
“Personally,” he adds, “I feel like the country responded incredibly well to the outbreak, and not just the government, but the people, too. In times of crisis, all Korean citizens always come together and do what is necessary to overcome the crisis they face. They all follow the guidelines given by the government, and the government also responds with swift actions to tackle the crisis.”
Yet despite South Korea’s success so far in battling COVID-19 — according to the European CDC, it has only seen 230 COVID-19related deaths in all of the pandemic as of Friday, compared to about 1,200 in Canada — the economic landscape its citizens are returning to has been battered.
“The economy has been devastated,” says Dr. Jun-ho Lee, a 37-year-old dentist from Seoul. “People are afraid to travel, to go to restaurants, clinics, movie theatres, shopping centres, sports centres and to take public transportation.”
Additionally, he says, since the sales of electronics, clothes and cars decreased dramatically, retailers of those goods have also suffered, some facing bankruptcy.
“Yes, people are afraid. They do not want to go anywhere crowded. They do not go outside without masks. They would rather stay at home.”
Most South Koreans followed physical-distancing rules for about four weeks before they returned, about three weeks ago, to “normal” contact, according to Dae-shik Jo, the Republic of Korea’s former ambassador to Canada and current secretary general of the Korea NGO Council for Overseas Development Cooperation. The streets, he adds, became lively again about two weeks ago.
“People are worried, but not in a state of panic,” he says. “There is no hoarding of food or other items. It’s not completely over yet, (and people are) wary, but there is a growing optimism that it can be contained.”
Indeed, that optimism was evident in Wednesday’s general election, where two-thirds of the electorate attended polling stations, the highest turnout in 28 years.
“Voters,” wrote BBC News, “wore masks and stood at least one metre apart. They had their temperature taken, disinfected their hands and wore plastic gloves. Only then were they given their voting slip and allowed to head into the booth to cast their ballot.”
South Korean voters re-elected the ruling centre-left Democratic Party of Korea in a landslide, increasing its seat total in the 300seat National Assembly from 128 to 180, in what is considered by many observers to be a firm endorsement of the country’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Dr. Curtis notes there is much Canada can learn from South Korea and its successful response.
“There’s an important lesson that I hope will stick, which is that we need to ensure that we have the capacity to address these outbreak crises, which will happen again in the future,” he says. “I think most people figured that this would be influenza, so the fact that it’s coronavirus is a little bit surprising. But we’re going to have to deal with these things again, and you need some capacity within your system to deal with this. Which means in the good times, when we’re not in the middle of an epidemic, we need to refrain from the urge to cut budgets to public health and to the laboratories that run these operations. There’s always this drive for cost-effectiveness, but you need this surge capacity for times like this.
“And I think the lessons learned from 2020 will be to try and streamline how decisions are made and give the people in these positions in public health the authority to do things without having to wait for the people that they answer to to sign off on absolutely every decision.”
Have residents in South Korea fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic?
Wong says he has. “This might sound like a cliché answer, but I don’t think anyone will ever be the same after this. Personally, there will always be that thought in my head of what happened, perhaps until I die. Although it didn’t really affect me as much as the majority of others, I think that there may be some sort of subconscious mental change.”
Turcotte-Novosedlik says the pandemic has confirmed that “anything really can happen at any time, and that the best way through whatever happens is to remain calm and respond accordingly.
“When I look at other places around the world, I can easily see that people have not done this, which has led to panic buying and essentially large free-for-alls. Is the world different? I think the world now is aware of just how unprepared it was to tackle a pandemic of this magnitude, which has been forecasted to happen for some time now. I think this pandemic will definitely change the world and be an eye-opening event for many world governments.”
Gil adds that the pandemic has taught her how important social co-operation is. “I’ve had this thought, maybe after all we are all just social animals that are so connected more than we ever thought.”
Dr. Lee, meanwhile, can’t help but wonder if we’ll ever rid ourselves of COVID-19. “Will there be a perfect cure?” he asks. “Who knows? (Until) then, I sincerely wish everyone, not just our people in South Korea but everyone on this beautiful planet Earth, to keep ourselves careful and safe. Then there would be no tragedy of losing our loved ones to this crazy virus.” bdeachman@postmedia.com
Is the world different?
I think the world now is aware of just how unprepared it was to tackle a pandemic of this magnitude, which has been forecasted to happen for some time now.