Member-only story
The Real Reason South Korea Was Able to Stop Covid-19
Political accountability is the missing ingredient
The real story of South Korea’s successful containment of the coronavirus begins with a disaster.
In the spring of 2014, an overloaded ferry carrying hundreds of high school students slow-motion sank en route to Jeju Island while a horrified nation watched the ship go down on TV and distraught teens texted emotional goodbyes to their parents. Some passengers were rescued by local fishing boats, but by the time the Korean coast guard finally arrived, it was too late. More than 300 people perished, sparking outrage and a national reckoning with the corruption, greed, and poor national leadership that led to the tragedy, including the administration of then-President Park Geun-hye.
South Korea’s largely successful containment of the coronavirus has been attributed to many things, from the nation’s Confucian heritage to its recent history of responding to earlier coronavirus outbreaks, such as MERS and SARS. South Korea and the United States both reported their first Covid-19 case on the same day in late January, but South Korea has suffered fewer than 300 deaths, while the United States is on track to pass 100,000 dead before summer.
