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Confucianism Isn't Helping Beat the Coronavirus
Confucianism Isn’t Helping Beat the Coronavirus
Cultural tropes don’t explain South Korea’s success against COVID-19. Competent leadership does.
BY S. NATHAN PARK | APRIL 2, 2020, 1:05 PM Foreign Policy
s COVID-19 ravages the United States and Europe, South Korea’s response to the pandemic is earning praises from around the world. The unmatched scale and efficiency of the country’s test-and-quarantine scheme allowed South Korea to stop the coronavirus in its tracks, pushing down the number of new cases to around 100 a day from a peak of around 900 new cases a day in late February. In addition to Korea’s testing capacity, the international media has marveled at its drive-thru testing facilities, detailed tracking of the movements of coronavirus patients, and the calm response of the public, which buys the same amount of toilet paper as before.
Perhaps inevitably, some media have offered reductive cultural explanations for this success. A common trope is that Koreans are less individualistic, more community-oriented, and more willing to sacrifice for the greater good. A New York Times article, for example, claimed: “Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies beset by polarization and populist backlash.” An analysis in the Wall Street Journal said that “the lingering cultural imprint of Confucianism gives a paternalistic state a freer hand to intrude in people’s lives during an emergency.” Several analysts offered that freedom-loving Westerners would not accept South Korea’s contact tracing, as the Western public would not accept the invasion of privacy that detailed every location they visited while carrying the virus.
This is nonsense, and it repeats the same mistake that allowed the rampant coronavirus outbreaks in the United States and Europe in the first place...
Perhaps inevitably, some media have offered reductive cultural explanations for this success. A common trope is that Koreans are less individualistic, more community-oriented, and more willing to sacrifice for the greater good. A New York Times article, for example, claimed: “Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies beset by polarization and populist backlash.” An analysis in the Wall Street Journal said that “the lingering cultural imprint of Confucianism gives a paternalistic state a freer hand to intrude in people’s lives during an emergency.” Several analysts offered that freedom-loving Westerners would not accept South Korea’s contact tracing, as the Western public would not accept the invasion of privacy that detailed every location they visited while carrying the virus.
This is nonsense, and it repeats the same mistake that allowed the rampant coronavirus outbreaks in the United States and Europe in the first place...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/02/confucianism-south-korea-coronavirus-testing-cultural-trope-orientalism/
