Despite its close proximity to China, South Korea, following its
painful experiences with the SARS and MERS outbreaks, has been distinctly prepared for coping with a virus pandemic. With an efficient bureaucracy and state of the art technology, South Korea had been able to contain the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) to just 30 patients until February 17. Extensive preparations from as early as November 2019 and proactive policies led to President Moon Jae-In’s premature
declaration in mid-February that “the situation will almost disappear.”
Flash forward three weeks and South Korea has more than 7,000 confirmed infections and 50 deaths, the largest outbreak outside of China, with the exception of Italy. The southeastern city of Daegu, the epicenter of the outbreak in South Korea, has been likened to the
new Wuhan and over 91 countries have either banned or restricted entry of Koreans.
With everything seeming so positive just weeks before, how did the situation get so bad? Cults and conservative politicians are at the center of it all.
Korea’s confidence in containing COVID-19 came crashing down with the discovery of patient 31, a member of a fringe Christian sect known as the Sincheonji Church of Jesus. The group has multiple outposts in China, including Wuhan, where it is believed several members caught the virus. Despite warnings to self-isolate after a high fever and flu-like symptoms in the city of Daegu, the unnamed woman visited multiple large-scale church gatherings, where she spread the virus to hundreds of other churchgoers. As a result, only days after her diagnosis the number of confirmed cases skyrocketed to more than a thousand, prompting the government to declare a public health emergency.