COVID-19—Glance to Asia: Interviews with a Friend and a Relative in Shanghai and Seoul

WOON YUNG CHUNG WITH HIS SON, GENE:  “Unusually, no line to buy masks in front of a pharmacy in Seoul, as daily new COVID-19 patients are only 10-14 per day in the last week.” Photos by Woon Yung Chung.

By Hannah Reimann, Woon Yung Chung & Shen Xiaowen

Asia Pacific Workstation Business Development Manager at HP in Seoul, Korea, Woon Yung Chung, provided WestView News with an interesting interview, shedding light on the unique situation we are facing on the planet at this time, the Coronavirus Pandemic.

As many people know, Korea saw its first confirmed case the same day as the USA. It now has around 10,718 total cases, daily cases under 20 people as of April 25 and number of deceased at 240. 8600 people have recovered, a rate surpassing 80%.

South Korea has “flattened its curve” in different ways: 1. Testing before other countries with its drive-through testing centers, diagnosing a lot of people in a short period of time at these designated centers, 2. Tracing people’s movements: Various district offices will send text messages of dates and places people have been. If you’ve been to those places, you must be tested immediately. 3. Information: President Moon-Jae In raised the entire country’s threat alert to the highest level possible very early on. There was a high level of transparency, clear guidelines, briefings at 11 am every day and at 2pm took place from the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention and the Ministry of Health and Welfare. 4. Self-Isolation: Minimizing the infection by strict social distancing was enforced by the people. Without a lockdown, there were no people on the streets. That awareness is what citizens and reporters consider the biggest factor in containing the virus in Korea. 5. Delivery Culture: Anything in Korea can be delivered within 12-24 hours, partly because South Korea is roughly the size of New Jersey. In this way it’s not really fair to compare it to the US. However, we can learn from Korea’s experience. 6. Masks and physical distancing were employed with focus and discipline early on. Ordinary people all wore masks whenever they went outside.

WestView: What were the exact isolation regulations put into effect?

WYC: There were no isolations forced by the Korean government on the people, just mandatory medical checks and two week’s isolation for overseas travelers from the end of March. Regarding my company, we had a work-from-home policy adopted since mid February, but not all companies adopted this. Work-from-home was not forced on all companies. 

WYC: Looking at how other countries are suffering, I am amazed at how Koreans were lucky to survive without mandatory lock-down, especially while we are physically right next to China. 

WestView: How long did the regulations last?

WYC: No isolations on a country level were ever put into effect. The company I work for had almost two months of a work-from-home policy since mid February. 

WESTVIEW: Have you lost any friends or relatives to COVID-19?

WYC: No, fortunately not. In Korea, the number of deceased is 240 persons to date, and 10,718 cumulative patients as of Apr 25th. The South Korean population is 51 million. In Seoul where I live, there have been 628 patients so far, and two deceased to date. So, it has been rare to know that actual people you know have died or even got infected. (Knock on wood!) 

WYC: http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/en/bdBoardList.do?brdId=16&brdGubun=161&dataGubun=&ncvContSeq=&contSeq=&board_id=&gubun= shows statistics from Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare. 

 

WestView: How has your business life been affected and has the government quickly helped financially if your family needs support?

WYC:  Yes, the company I work for has a factory in Wuhan. So that was a direct hit. The Korean government has been swift in managing COVID-19, but I cannot say the same for saving commercial businesses, even with the Korean Congress election on Apr 15th. Having seen China spread funds to civilians during a previous outbreak, there is a lesson to be learned that people tend to save money, and do not end up spending during a crisis. So, there are some doubts how free subsidy money from the government will actually help businesses. Money vouchers with expiration dates would help businesses, but that is not an option considered at this point in Korea. The Korea government is saying that their rainy days are not over, and they are saving funds. Also, the government tested a lot of potential patients, which was a huge expense for them [anyone with symptoms was tested free of charge]. 

 

WestView: How are your kids faring with the pandemic?

WYC: Universities started online classes in March. Gene, my son, started his first year of university, but hasn’t met many of his classmates. He plays online games with his buddies a lot. My wife and I encourage him now to play games, as opposed to going out to have beer with his friends. Jahyun, my daughter, just graduated from college, and teaches music to her students. She still goes out to teach her students, but my wife and I prefer to drive her by car so she can stay away from public transportation. Jahyun is bored, because previously she could go out for meals, gym, shopping and now she doesn’t. She is fully participating in social distancing. 

 

WestView: Were you tested? When and how long did it take to get a result?

WYC: Nope. The newspapers indicate that it used to take 24 hours to get test results in January. However, since February, one could get a test result in six hours.

TRAFFIC ALMOST NORMAL for a Saturday afternoon.

WestView: How much information is exchanged between Korea and China in the eyes of a citizen in Korea?

WYC: Well, it’s no secret that the Chinese government controls information. For most Koreans, what is shared from China is from the Chinese government via Chinese news, much less than from friends in China directly.  While there was a lot of information about China in the Korean news, I’d guess most Koreans wouldn’t take any of it at face value. After all, we Koreans impeached our last president, so we don’t trust our government fully. Why would we trust another country’s government?

WYC: I’ve been working with people from all the Asia Pacific countries for the past 20 years. So I have good friends all over the Asia Pacific who are work colleagues.  During my calls to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan since January 2020, we would spend at least a couple of minutes talking about the status that they are in, and vice versa. However, since my friends are in Beijing and Shanghai, they were much less impacted compared to people in Wuhan City or Hubei province.  Again, I would guess that the information that my big city friends in China have would be from news sources owned by the Chinese government and from the internet monitored by the Chinese government. And that isn’t a very different level of information than what I get as a Korean citizen from the Korean media.

WYC: My friends in Hong Kong and Taiwan have been much less impacted by COVID-19. Those countries put very strong measures in place, controlling the disease as early as January.  We can learn from their experiences that this virus can be controlled.

WestView: Do you know anything about the Chinese situation?

WYC: We have statistics, but most Koreans think that actual casualties are higher than the numbers we get from the Chinese government. Since mid-January, COVID-19 covered 1/3 to 1/2 of news time on television, covering the Chinese and Korean situations. Some Koreans staying in Wuhan managed to escape from the Wuhan lock down, and returned to Korea. The Korean media did good coverage about the Korean viewpoint on the Wuhan situation as well. But, bear in mind that the Korean government today is very friendly with the Chinese government, and never closed the border from China, since the Korean government fears that closed borders will ruin the economy. Knowing this, the Korean media didn’t go to full lengths about how bad the situation is in China, especially after seeing news correspondents from the USA in China getting kicked out by the Chinese government after a report that China didn’t_like.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-bans-all-u-s-nationals-working-for-the-wall-street-journal-new-york-times-washington-post-whose-press-credentials-end-in-2020-11584464690.

WestView: Did the question of COVID-19 arising from a lab in Wuhan appear in Korean news to your knowledge?

WYC: Yes, also the fact that China is accusing the USA that it might have caused a leak from an earlier military conference. But most Koreans believe that the Wuhan lab folks mismanaged bio-waste from virus studies, and it was leaked this way to a civilian market in Wuhan.

 

WestView: Was it a bioweapon? 2. Was it an accidental escape? Could the virus have come from a natural environment?

WYC: I think it was a virus study in the Wuhan lab that leaked out.

Here’s why I believe this is true:

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is partly funded by the US government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
In 2015, the WIV’s National Bio-safety Laboratory was completed at a cost of 300 million yuan ($44 million) in collaboration with the French government’s CIRI lab, and was the first biosafety level 4 (BSL–4) laboratory to be built in mainland China.[2][14] The establishment of the laboratory was partially funded by the U.S. government[12] and took over a decade to complete from its conception in 2003.[2] The Wuhan lab had published a potential issue of a bat coronavirus in 2015 with an international team, and another paper in 2017, according to the same Wikipedia link above. If you are making a bioweapon, you can’t publish papers about them, and you don’t work with an international team, in my opinion.
In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the Institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect HeLa. The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.[18][19] In 2017, a team from the Institute announced that coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats at a cave in Yunnan contain all the genetic pieces of the SARS virus, and hypothesized that the direct progenitor of the human virus originated in this cave. The team, who spent five years sampling the bats in the cave, noted the presence of a village only a kilometer away, and warned of “the risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS”.[17][20]

WestView: Are people in Korea aware that these are issues being discussed in the US right now?

WYC: Yes; they’re my favorite news sagas since January.  I wish president Trump had more credibility so he could argue more effectively on what needs to be done with China, rather than taking things emotionally. But we all know there is a presidential election coming up for Trump.

WYC: Andrew Cuomo is one famous governor now in the Korean media, followed by Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Governor, who said, “I am a Korean son-in-law.” [Governor Hogan secured 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea for his state and is married to Yumi Hogan, who is South Korean.]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/coronavirus/bs-md-hogan-testing-20200420-atxs3grvbjdgphzzt4tfhuhnbm-story.html 

WestView: Do you know if these details were or are discussed by the Korean and Chinese press?

WYC: Yes, for sure they are hot topics every day in the Korean media. I’m not sure what my friends will see in China’s media, however.

Woon Yung Chung manages a workstation business for HP Inc. based in Seoul, Korea. He was raised in Seoul, studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, when he often drove down to NYC for night-life and to visit his cousins. He has fond memories of NYC.

Hannah Reimann is a pro musician, filmmaker, actor and writer who enjoys helping out at WestView News. She is half-Korean and Woon Yung is her cousin.

Shen Xiaowen is a university student in Shanghai who worked as an intern for WestView News and St. John’s in the Village in July and August 2019 via the Foundation for Global Education.

Scenes from Shanghai

EMPTY NANJING ROAD IN FEBRUARY, above, which normally is the busiest street in Shanghai.

 

NANJING ROAD.

 

PEOPLE PRACTICING SOCIAL DISTANCING in China. Photos by Shen Xiaowen.

WestView: How much information is exchanged between Korea and China in the eyes of a citizen in Korea?

WYC: Well, it’s no secret that the Chinese government controls information. For most Koreans, what is shared from China is from the Chinese government via Chinese news, much less than from friends in China directly.  While there was a lot of information about China in the Korean news, I’d guess most Koreans wouldn’t take any of it at face value. After all, we Koreans impeached our last president, so we don’t trust our government fully. Why would we trust another country’s government?

WYC: I’ve been working with people from all the Asia Pacific countries for the past 20 years. So I have good friends all over the Asia Pacific who are work colleagues.  During my calls to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan since January 2020, we would spend at least a couple of minutes talking about the status that they are in, and vice versa. However, since my friends are in Beijing and Shanghai, they were much less impacted compared to people in Wuhan City or Hubei province.  Again, I would guess that the information that my big city friends in China have would be from news sources owned by the Chinese government and from the internet monitored by the Chinese government. And that isn’t a very different level of information than what I get as a Korean citizen from the Korean media.   

WYC: My friends in Hong Kong and Taiwan have been much less impacted by COVID-19. Those countries put very strong measures in place, controlling the disease as early as January.  We can learn from their experiences that this virus can be controlled. 

WestView: Do you know anything about the Chinese situation?

WYC: We have statistics, but most Koreans think that actual casualties are higher than the numbers we get from the Chinese government. Since mid-January, COVID-19 covered 1/3 to 1/2 of news time on television, covering the Chinese and Korean situations. Some Koreans staying in Wuhan managed to escape from the Wuhan lock down, and returned to Korea. The Korean media did good coverage about the Korean viewpoint on the Wuhan situation as well. But, bear in mind that the Korean government today is very friendly with the Chinese government, and never closed the border from China, since the Korean government fears that closed borders will ruin the economy. Knowing this, the Korean media didn’t go to full lengths about how bad the situation is in China, especially after seeing news correspondents from the USA in China getting kicked out by the Chinese government after a report that China didn’t_like.  https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-bans-all-u-s-nationals-working-for-the-wall-street-journal-new-york-times-washington-post-whose-press-credentials-end-in-2020-11584464690

WestView: Did the question of COVID-19 arising from a lab in Wuhan appear in Korean news to your knowledge? 

WYC: Yes, also the fact that China is accusing the USA that it might have caused a leak from an earlier military conference. But most Koreans believe that the Wuhan lab folks mismanaged bio-waste from virus studies, and it was leaked this way to a civilian market in Wuhan.  

WestView: Was it a bioweapon? 2. Was it an accidental escape? Could the virus have come from a natural environment?

WYC: I think it was a virus study in the Wuhan lab that leaked out.  

Here’s why I believe this is true:

      • The Wuhan Institute of Virology is partly funded by the US government.  
      • The Wuhan lab had published a potential issue of a bat coronavirus in 2015 with an international team, and another paper in 2017, according to the same Wikipedia link above. If you are making a bioweapon, you can’t publish papers about them, and you don’t work with an international team, in my opinion. 
        • In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the Institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect HeLa. The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells.[18][19] 
        • In 2017, a team from the Institute announced that coronaviruses found in horseshoe bats at a cave in Yunnan contain all the genetic pieces of the SARS virus, and hypothesized that the direct progenitor of the human virus originated in this cave. The team, who spent five years sampling the bats in the cave, noted the presence of a village only a kilometer away, and warned of “the risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS”.[17][20] 

WestView: Are people in Korea aware that these are issues being discussed in the US right now?

WYC: Yes; they’re my favorite news sagas since January.  I wish president Trump had more credibility so he could argue more effectively on what needs to be done with China, rather than taking things emotionally. But we all know there is a presidential election coming up for Trump.  

WYC: Andrew Cuomo is one famous governor now in the Korean media, followed by Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Governor, who said,I am a Korean son-in-law.” [Governor Hogan secured 500,000 coronavirus tests from South Korea for his state and is married to Yumi Hogan, who is South Korean.]

WestView: Do you know if these details were or are discussed by the Korean and Chinese press?

WYC: Yes, for sure they are hot topics every day in the Korean media. I’m not sure what my friends will see in China’s media, however. 

Woon Yung Chung manages a workstation business for HP Inc. based in Seoul, Korea. He was raised in Seoul, studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, when he often drove down to NYC for night-life and to visit his cousins. He has fond memories of NYC. 

Hannah Reimann is a pro musician, filmmaker, actor and writer who enjoys helping out at WestView News. She is half-Korean and Woon Yung is her cousin.

Shen Xiaowen is a university student in Shanghai who worked as an intern for WestView News and St. John’s in the Village in July and August 2019 via the Foundation for Global Education.

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