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The Covid-19 outbreak in South Korea: from late February to early March


KIM Seok-hyeon.   first upoaded: 2020-03-05.   last updated: 2020-12-31. 


Covid-19 hit South Korea hard. As of March 6, there were 6,284 verified cases of corona infection. Of course when it was presumed that once it hit China in January, South Korea would be affected to a certain degree. But It was not until the 31st verified case was revealed on February 18 that South Korea had assumed its control over corona. The first case of infection was verified on January 20. The first patient was discovered at the Inchon airport pass and was identified as a Chinese from Wuhan, which was the world first city severely hit by corona and has been shut down since January 25. Fortunately, the first patients eventually recovered and returned to China. From January 20 to March 18, only 31 patients were identified; about one patient per day. So it was said that corona was rather under control of the KCDC (Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and local agents. Korea was cited too by overseas news media as a country that minimized contagion by the tight port surveillance and smart tracking tools such as mobile apps that would show the past pathways of any verified corona patient. Though the KMC (Korean Medical Association), the representing body of Korean medicine doctors, continued to warn that corona 19 could be explosive without the control of the border with China since January 26, it was not heeded seriously by the government. Indeed, in early February, many countries such as the US and Vietnam began to shut down the border with China. The Korean government that did not take any border control against China may have been rather boastful of then seemingly controlled situation only until the 31st patient emerged. The emergence of the 31st patient changed the whole scene drastically.

The tracing of the 31st patient revealed that she was a member of a Daegu church of Shincheonji church, a Christian sect that was alleged to be heretic and more or less secretive. It turned out that she, while being sick, had already attended Church ceremonies with about a thousand people. The investigation of the KCDC and Daegu officials have led to decades and even hundreds of corona affected cases every day since then. The network of Shincheonji was suspected to be nation-wide and to be very closely knitted among members. The government pressured so hard on Shincheonji that Shincheonji eventually submitted a list of two hundred thousand church members on February 25. The provincial and local administrations in collaboration narrowed down the list to about 8,500 nation-wide candidates of potential contagion by diagnosing related symptoms over the phone. A huge scale of standard diagnoses have been arranged while the candidates were recommended to stay home, as a way of self-regulated quarantines. Not only Shincheonji believers but also related people who happened to be with them were also placed on the list of formal diagnosis and also recommended to stay home while waiting for their turns of diagnosis. The investigations turned out to be fruitful though shocking. As of March 6, 3,912 corona patients are identified as Shincheonji followers. That amounts to 62.3 percent of the total 6,284 patients (Shincheonji + 2,372 other patients) (Figure 1). Since even some more potential patients had to wait to be diagnosed and classified further, there might have been more Shincheonji cases to be revealed.

Figure 1. Accumulated diagnosed cases and accumulated verified cases by cluster Accumulate diagnosed cases and accumulated verified cases by cluster Sources: Author compiled data from the data provided by the KCDC, cdc.go.kr.

Nevertheless, as the tracking down of Shincheonji related patients got close to the end, there emerged signs of slow down too. After the last week's burst of cases reaching 909 new patients as the record high in February 29, the number of new cases were rather stationary about 500's on average (Figure 2). Since the standard diagnosis reached the record high 18,199 in March 6, the rate of verified patients dropped to 2.8 percent as of March 6, the level of about 10 days ago. As more patients are identified as Shincheonji related cases, the number of rest of accumulated cases even dropped in March 5 to 2,314 from 2,437 of the day before, though slightly recovering to 2,372 of the day after (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Newly diagnosed cases and newly verified cases and the rate of the verified to the diagnosed Accumulate diagnosed cases and accumulated verified cases by cluster Sources: Author compiled data from the data provided by the KCDC, cdc.go.kr.

Since most Shincheonji related patients were amassed in Daegu metro city and its neighboring province North Gyeongsang province, the accumulated number and the newly verified daily patients were heavily concentrated in Daegu and N. Gyeongsang while the rest show rather a sign of control with a limited number of patients. While the number of newly verified patients was around 500 recently in Daegu and North Gyeongsang, the rest had cases around 30 (Figure 3). If you take a look at the number of accumulated patients by cluster (Shincheonji and etc) and region, you can see the heavy concentration of patients in Daegu and North Gyeongsang both in Shincheonji and etc (Figure 4). South Gyeongsang is only the other region that had more than 20 Shincheonji related cases (22 as of March 6). There are regions where non-Shincheonji related or 'etc' cases are more outstanding then Shincheonji cases. Seoul shows 'etc' cases far more than Shincheonji ones (110 and 4 as of March 6) and S. Chungcheong province shows just 'etc' 90 cases. Seoul had several small clusters of contagion and South Chungcheong had one single cluster originated in a local dance lesson club.

Figure 3. Newly diagnosed cases and newly verified cases by region Newly diagnosed cases and newly verified cases by region Sources: Author compiled data from the data provided by the KCDC, cdc.go.kr.

Figure 4. Accumulated diagnosed cases and accumulated verified cases by cluster and region Accumulate diagnosed cases and accumulated verified cases by cluster by cluster and region Sources: Author compiled data from the data provided by the KCDC cdc.go.kr.


(*) This article is published in intelligence korea, Summer and Winter, 2020. The Korean version is at intelligencekor.kr/periodical/article.html?bno=13.