Thread by @koreanforeigner

I've never heard of Shadi Hamid before, but he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, so I think it would be wrong to assume that he's an idiot. Instead, I'd like to think he wrote this because Twitter's strict character limits prevent people from writing treatises.

https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1257669641494765568

It's true that SKoreans have deferred much authority to the government to combat COVID-19. It's also true that much of this deference to authority has made the invasion of people's privacy a central issue that must be dealt with in the future.

bbc.com/news/world-asi…

But it's also true that SKoreans aren't unthinking automatons who are perfectly fine with the government having this much power because (insert sarcastic tone here) we're Asians and Asians simply don't care about such silly things like freedom and democracy.

By and large, many SKoreans have come to accept this compromise in our freedom and privacy because, for now at least, the SKorean government has done an excellent job of dealing with COVID-19.

For four out of the last seven days, there have been ZERO new domestic COVID-19 cases.

This was a result of competent government leadership - testing, contact tracing, social distancing, mask allocation, disaster relief funds, shutting schools, etc.

But it wasn't just what the government did, but also what it didn't do. The biggest being there being no lockdown.

While the SKorean government's response hasn't been perfect, it's been pretty damned good. But more importantly, it's been effective. And that matters a great deal. Had the government's efforts not been effective, the public's mood would be a lot different.

In 2015, the SKorean government's response to the MERS virus was a lot less stellar.

koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/202…

bbc.com/news/world-asi…

straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia…

Coupled with the government's botched rescue attempts of the Sewol, it sealed its fate.

When the SKorean government proved itself to be incompetent and ineffective, there wasn't any "deference to centralized state authority." Just ask former President Park Geun-hye.

time.com/4583033/south-…

It goes without saying that while SKorea and the US are both democratic republics, both have different cultures, histories, and geography; and therefore different outlooks. So maybe it's true that the same strategies adopted by SKorea might not work in the US.

Or maybe the notion of "rugged individualism" infantilizes Americans just as much as the phrase "deference to centralized state authority" infantilizes SKoreans. Maybe what the American public needs are evidence of competent and effective leadership from their own government!

So before we heap scorn on other countries' methods of containing this virus, perhaps we should ask a few questions first.

Has it been effective? Can it be duplicated? If not, what compromises can be made? Can these powers be stripped when this crisis is over?

END