{"id":4986,"date":"2020-04-14T17:32:32","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4986"},"modified":"2020-04-14T17:32:32","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T00:32:32","slug":"new-yorker-the-comforts-of-south-koreas-coronavirus-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=4986","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker: the Comforts of South Korea’s Coronavirus Response"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Asked why I moved from the United States to South Korea, I often say that it was because I wanted to live in the First World. Though it began as a half joke, this response has recently gained a new and discomfiting plausibility. Visiting Americans always express envy at Seoul\u2019s subway system, perhaps the finest in the world, and also at a host of other major pieces of infrastructure and minor everyday conveniences unimaginable back home. Still, just a few weeks ago, when I was receiving concerned messages about the coronavirus outbreak here from friends, family, and even editors, it was possible to believe American life was the safer, more stable option over all\u2014a belief that the\u00a0pandemic<\/a>\u2019s Stateside rampage has made untenable.<\/p>

covid<\/em>-19 has been unavoidable in the Korean news media since the country\u2019s first confirmed case, in late January. \u201cKim Eo-jun\u2019s News Factory,\u201d a radio program I listen to every weekday morning, now leads with nothing else, though the improving domestic situation has widened the show\u2019s purview to include other countries\u2019 coronavirus struggles. On some days, the show incorporates clips of speeches by American officials, from the Centers for Disease Control and other organizations, praising South Korea\u2019s testing and containment strategies and asking why the United States can\u2019t replicate them. Kim, the program\u2019s outspoken host, has more than once followed up with this comment: \u201cDon\u2019t you think we\u2019re a developed nation now?,\u201d spoken with a faintly startled satisfaction, as if he\u2019d only just realized that fact himself.<\/p>

Of course, Kim doesn\u2019t say \u201cdeveloped nation\u201d: he uses the Korean word\u00a0seonjinguk<\/em>, a term for the advanced countries of the world, as opposed to all the\u00a0hujinguk<\/em>lagging behind. Though South Korea has been seen for well over a decade as one of the most strenuously impressive of all\u00a0seonjinguk<\/em>\u2014with its unceasing production of pop-music spectacles, its \u201cwiredness\u201d across all sectors of society, its recently demonstrated ability\u00a0to clean up<\/a>\u00a0at the Academy Awards\u2014South Koreans themselves have a tendency to see their country as, in essence, still a\u00a0hujinguk<\/em>. A Korean friend, a prominent economist, once described this to me as a national inferiority complex; it flares up in times of disaster, such as the 2014\u00a0sinking<\/a>\u00a0of the M.V. Sewol, the kind of accident seen as embarrassingly characteristic of an underdeveloped society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Read the whole thing at the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asked why I moved from the United States to South Korea, I often say that it was because I wanted to live in the First World. Though it began as a half joke, this response has recently gained a new and discomfiting plausibility. Visiting Americans always express envy at Seoul\u2019s subway system, perhaps the finest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4988,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4986\/revisions\/4988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}