K-Madness 2020-2023
The Lasting Covid Mania
“This treadmill is malfunctioning. I can’t go faster than 6km/h,” I said to the attendant at my gym.
“It’s the new Covid policy. We have to cap the treadmill speed at 6km/h [3.7mph]. It’s to minimize sweating and heavy breathing to reduce transmission,” said the staff wearing a double mask.
“Unbelievable,” I thought, though not completely surprised. Then, I scanned the gym. A few spots to the right of my treadmill was a man on a stationary cycle, pedaling with great gusto.
“What about that guy?” I pointed to the man, whose glistening sweat was dripping down his forehead, and whose mask was fluttering inward and outward, around his concealed mouth, with every effort of his inhales and exhales.
“There is no speed limit we can set on that,” said the young employee frowning with slight annoyance. He then added sternly, “Please wear your mask over your nose. We take the safety of our members seriously,” and walked away to tell the cycler to pedal with less vigor.
This was Seoul in July 2021. As the officially-final year of Covid is coming to an end, I decided to take a moment to reflect on the days of the pandemic. It’s been a surreal few years of witnessing bewildering paranoias and aberrant behaviors. And I figured that such strange phenomenon deserved to be reckoned with and remarked upon.
The gym regulation tops my list of ‘Korea’s most absurd Covid policies,’ but it was hardly the only farcical one. In 2021, our government enforced what was called “Level 4 Social Distancing Measures,” consisting of curfews and restrictions as gimmicky as the title suggests. As if completing Level 3 had advanced us to a more challenging Level 4, like in a video game, which was ironic because, in this case, leveling up implied that each of the previous levels had failed to contain Covid, thus inferring the futility of the measures. Nonetheless, the levels kept escalating.
A few examples of Level 4 included: limiting social gatherings to 4 people before 6pm, and to 2 people after 6pm, the official reason being that people got drunk more in larger groups and therefore spread Covid more (note that 8 friends couldn’t gather for lunch together but could sit in 2 tables of four, even next to each other, as long as the tables weren’t conjoined and the sitters didn’t interact); requiring proofs of address and family relations, if a family of more than 2-4 members, living in the same household, wanted to gather outside their home (family members living in separate residences were subject to the group limits); simultaneously, allowing weddings and funerals to be attended by up to 49 people, provided that the guestlist consists exclusively of [extended] family members; no mandatory regulations on continuing office work.
Perhaps the inanity of Level 4 deterred the public from complaining about other more serious measures of surveillance, like the mandatory QR-code check-ins in every restaurant, store, and public venue, the installation of temperature-scanning cameras at their entrances, and the digital vaccine pass, which, if you refused to use, could be replaced with a paper PCR certificate expiring every 48 hours.
Did the public actually follow all these rules? one might ask. Absolutely. For one, a system of reward and punishment was put in place; anyone reporting Covid violations received a financial reward from the government and the entity violating the rules was fined. Also, the mood of heightened fear seemed to have deprived people of their normal reasoning abilities, as in the gym situation. In the beginning of the pandemic, the government contact-traced every single Covid infection via CCTVs and personal bank cards, and publicly shared the itineraries of the infected people. Subsequently, the venues visited by the patients were obliged to shut down for a period of disinfection. Many had lost their businesses this way, not just because of the days of transactions lost, but because of the stigma that followed. The public avoided the sites of infection believing that the lingering virus would be infectious. It was as if the population had silently agreed that the severity of the government control correlated with the degree of fatality, albeit unsubstantiated.
This state of extreme fright persisted, enhanced by the consistent reminder of the ubiquitous risk of Covid. Since 2020, every morning at around 11:30 for 3 years, every smartphone inside Korea shrieked the alarm of Public Safety Alerts that informed the number of new daily Covid cases. In all this process, not catching Covid became an obsession amongst the public, and passing on Covid solidified as a sign of shameful and willful neglect of personal responsibility of not following the rules and not wearing a mask, like catching and passing on an STD by not using a condom. And even though the most rigorous maskers had contracted Covid (I know only one exception, who confessed she didn’t leave her house and slept with a mask on because of her working husband - no joke), the collective fear and shame of getting Covid never dissipated.
The importance of collectivism wasn’t downplayed either (quite complementarily to our Confucian culture). “Together We Can Beat Covid” was the official government slogan, and banners exhibiting this caption were splattered on the windows of every convenience store, bus/metro station, and general public venue. And so, the hope of collectively “triumphing over” the virus prevailed in the public consciousness: “when we beat Covid…”, “when all this is over…” were commonly heard phrases for a long while. But what did it mean to “beat Covid”? I still don’t know. I would have loved to punch it in the face to declare my win but that obviously wasn’t how it worked. And since it was never explained what “beating Covid” meant, I don’t know at what point it was beaten either. All Covid measures were dropped abruptly in May 2023 (except for the ongoing mask mandates in hospitals), after the WHO declared that the pandemic was over. Based on what metrics, it is not revealed. But the Korean media stopped reporting about Covid cold turkey, and people mysteriously agreed that the country was safe again full stop.
Level 4 aside, the most grueling Covid measure, for me, was the international travelers’ quarantine. From 2020 until May 2022, Korea imposed strict quarantines for all inbound travelers (the vaccinated could apply for an exemption towards the end). And with every trip I took during the pandemic, I witnessed a gradual intensification of the surveillance methods over time. On my first trip back to Seoul in March 2020, I was required to self-quarantine at home without any supervision. A few months later, an app was created. Upon returning from my second trip, I had to report, on a daily basis, my body temperature and any potential symptom through the app, equipped with a location tracking ability. In the subsequent time, in addition to the app, one government official was designated to monitor me personally 24/7. Once, I was sound asleep in my own bed at 2am, when I received a phone call from my monitorer, ordering me to return home immediately. Apparently, “the newly-acquired high-tech GPS system” (as per the description of the official) had indicated that I was driving to the beach. The next day, I profusely complained about the inappropriateness of the nocturnal intrusion, and in compensation for my avid complaint, I was paid a house visit from the government official.
Around lunch time, one day during quarantine, as I was doing the dishes, I saw through my kitchen window a compact car slowly rolling in my driveway. A woman and a man got out of the vehicle. Upon noticing my presence from the driveway, they approached my window, encased right next to the entrance door.
“We are from the disease center. We came by to verify if you were home. We just called you on our way here to let you know that we were coming, but you didn’t pick up. Why didn’t you answer the phone?” inquired the woman from across the mosquito screen.
“I’m doing the dishes, can’t you see? I can’t hear anything when the water is running,” I replied coldly.
“Also, we received your complaint.”
“You called me at 2am. It’s ridiculous. Who does that?” I said with an obvious undertone of irritation.
“We have to make sure that everyone stays put. And the GPS indicated that you were out and about. It’s a brand new system. Very high-tech, equipped with various location pinning capabilities.”
“Then why didn’t you know that I was home sleeping at 2am?” I was stupefied.
“Because it’s a brand new, complex system and sometimes we get errors. The technicians are working on getting more information about it. But we needed to make sure that you hadn’t left your home.”
I lost my tongue for a second, as the thought flashed in my head that it was with my tax money that the idiots had installed an expensive tracking system, too complex to use for their incompetence. But such is the power of the government. They can oblige citizens to give them money, so that we, the people, can be kept under their coerced surveillance (paid by us), however erroneous and costly it may be, and make it sound like it’s for our own good.
Quarantines were also mandatory for the infected, either at home or at a Covid ward. Sometime in 2022, I received a phone call from a friend, whom I had had dinner with a few days earlier, letting me know that she had contracted Covid. She was very sorry to have put me at risk and couldn’t stop apologizing. I reassured her that I wasn’t really concerned about getting infected because the fatality is age-specific and I have no underlying condition. Also, we were probably all bound to get it anyway, because such is the nature of Covid. In turn, she let me know, my inquiry being absent, that she had volunteered to quarantine in a Covid ward for 10 days away from her husband and son, as if telling me so was relieving her somewhat of the guilt of potentially spreading the virus.
My friend’s recount of the ward experience was as such: she was enclosed in a room with other Covid patients with no possibility of leaving the room because it was locked from the outside; trays of meals were dropped at the door 3 times per day; and the inpatients were monitored 24/7 via a CCTV. When I asked her why she volunteered to go to the ward, she replied “not to put my family in danger,” and continued with saying that she was more relieved to be at the ward than at home. Did her family receive the vaccine that she said reassured her? Yes, they did. And inquired upon what treatments she was getting at the jail (oops, I meant ward), she answered “Tylenol and cough syrup.” It was wild to listen to my friend utter these words, without even slightly discerning her cognitive dissonance.
But my friend wasn’t the only person living in irrational fear and manifesting erratic behaviors. It happened more than once that my middle-aged ass was furiously scolded off by teenage cashiers in convenience stores for having my mask slightly under my nose, and that I shared dinner tables in restaurants with people putting their masks on between the main course and dessert. In March 2023, I was even called the police on for not masking in a taxi. I had just returned to Seoul from NY, where all restrictions had been dropped since months before, and I jumped into a taxi without the slightest consideration of wearing a mask. When the ride was nearing my destination, the driver suddenly erupted screaming at me, breaking the silence that had filled the car since I got onboard.
“You are a disgrace! Do you know what danger you have put me in? Why aren’t you wearing a mask! It’s because of people like you that others are dying!” clamored the driver out of nowhere.
Shaken and confused by this abrupt furor, I wasn’t going to back down at the accusation of being a murderer. So I told the driver that he shouldn’t have taken me as a customer if he felt uncomfortable, to which he said that masks were mandatory in taxis. He then threatened to call the police, which I welcomed. A few minutes later, two police cars arrived with two policemen in each.
“What is the problem?” one of the policemen asked.
“The passenger ordered me to call the police so I did,” said the driver slyly.
“Not true,” I interjected. “The driver threatened to call you because I wasn’t wearing a mask, so I told him to go ahead,” and I explained the situation.
“Masks are still mandatory on public transportation,” said the policeman to me.
“I didn’t know because I just arrived from America, where mask mandates have dropped since months ago. By the way, how are taxis public transportation? I would love to file a civil petition through your station to demand a reduction of the taxi fares to meet those of buses and metros,” a few seconds of silence followed, before the policeman repeated that masks were also still required in taxis.
Then I continued, “Besides, have you heard of the latest study on mask mandates? They don’t do anything. Completely ineffective. Even the Western newspapers admit it now,” and I showed him an article from the New York Times. “You are in law enforcement. How can you expect citizens to remain sane when we are required to follow these useless and absurd rules? Just consider what a waste of resources this is. Four policemen to deal with an obviously nothing-situation!”
“Do you wish to file a complaint against the driver?” asked the policeman after listening.
“I have no such intention. And I have no intention of wasting any more of your time either.”
“Well, have a good night then, ma’am,” and the case closed. The policeman’s dignity was truly a relief, like a drop of water in the desert, a glimpse of sanity in a world gone mad.
What does it matter? We are past Covid and life goes on as normal, one might say. Well, along with the arrival of the flu season, the paranoia season seems to be making a comeback in Korea. Last week at the gym, I witnessed a woman wearing a mask in the sauna. And this week, I saw two women wearing masks in the sauna. Absurdity can spread like a virus too, and it can drive even the normal people maniacal. I just hope that we are not in for another season of K-Madness.