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Techno-Orientalism
On May 9, 2020, I received an emergency alert text message transmitted to my cell phone by the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The message, known as a CBS (Cellular Broadcasting Service), an unblockable message system, urged people who had visited five night clubs and bars in Itaewon—a popular nightlife district in Seoul, South Korea's capital—between April 24 and May 6 to self-quarantine and to visit a local medical center for a COVID-19 test, regardless of clinical symptoms. I received similar texts four times that afternoon.
On May 5, the South Korean government further relaxed social distancing rules. There were only three new cases that day, all of which were from abroad. This was a sharp drop from the peak of 909 new cases on February 29. Since the country's first confirmed case, reported on January 20, COVID-19 had resulted in 10,804 cases and 254 deaths as of May 5, but the spread seemed to be under control and nearly flattened. Since late April, single-digit numbers of new coronavirus cases had been reported daily with no deaths. Then, on May 8, a twenty-nine-year-old male tested positive after visiting several locations in Itaewon, including gay nightclubs, on the night of May 1 and the early hours of May 2. That the spike of nearly 100 new infections was directly linked to gay nightclubs sparked widespread blame of the “promiscuous gay lifestyle.” The marked increase in homophobic backlash against the LGBTQ community via internet trolling exemplifies a typical cultural response of Asian countries depicted by the Western mainstream media.
South Korea's handling of COVID-19 has been hailed by the majority of Western media. National Public Radio touted South Korea's approach, grounded in conducting rapid, extensive testing for the coronavirus, as a model for other countries.1 An article in the New Yorker illustrated that the South Korean government's approach to combating the coronavirus made the American response look “absurd.”2 Echoing highly positive accounts, the New York Times identified a few lessons from the South Korean model to contain the coronavirus without shutting down the economy and asked whether these could work abroad, particularly in the United States.3
South Korea may deserve some credit for its handling of the coronavirus. Among numerous...