South Korea's Measured Response to COVID-19

By Sabrina Kim

St. Margaret's

In January of 2020, South Korea and the United States both received their first cases of covid-19. However, in spite of the fact that the US has around 6 times the population as Korea and that at one point they had the same number of cases, the difference in the number of cases and deaths between US and South Korea is way out of proportion. As of August 13 of 2020, while South Korea has 56 confirmed cases, the US has 55,941 confirmed cases. 

It is also quite astounding to say that Korea has been able to have a better control of the number of cases without having to take as drastic measures such as city lockdowns or economic shutdowns. Some measures Korea did take that became an extreme help with handling covid-19 includes, having the most expansive and organized testing system which also connects to how quick they were to broadly track and collect data all around to identify, isolate, and treat more efficiently. Luckily enough, Korea was also able to be in a much more prepared state than other places for the upcoming coronavirus because of many similar past experiences in Korea. For example, they had gone through a large MERS outbreak in May of 2015 that caused the Korean government and people making changes to health departments, accessibilities, and resources for the future. Things like these led to Korea being extremely quick in taking action during even just the beginning of covid-19. 

Unfortunately, for the US, they are taking up around a fourth to a fifth of all the covid cases worldwide. A part of why the United States is doing so badly with their case and death numbers can partly trace back to when the virus was in it’s beginning stages. Compared to a lot of other countries, the government was not taking the time to use opportunities to control the spread of covid, gather or use resources, and improve their testing and healthy systems related to covid. A lot of the organizations and such made to track and test cases were very unhelpful, disordered, and some even unusable. Not only, but the people of the country, are a lot less unified and cooperative with the motives to contain the virus such as partaking activities that could be of risk, being part of crowded areas, refusing to wear masks which would not just protect the person wearing the mask, but others around them. 

Seeing how much covid-19 has impacted the economy, people’s personal lives, people’s health, countries, and the functioning of the world in general, there are a lot of useful things to be learned from this experience. Hopefully in the future or even as the pandemic continues, seeing how covid-19 was a global pandemic, we will all be able to be more prepared and quick to take action, in a time that something similar may come into play.