Arriving at the international airport
at Incheon, now a global transport hub, I received instructions for South
Korea’s coronavirus screening procedures. Incheon will always remind me of
Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The same must be true for the Koreans to some
extent, as when I left the plane there were signs to guide arriving U.S.
servicemen in the appropriate direction. It was a significant change from
1950, when South Korea was disorganized and doomed.
I have wondered about the success South
Korea has had in combatting the coronavirus as compared to the United
States. I first marched what seemed like a mile to the arrivals area of
customs. There I was asked to sit in front of a uniformed customs agent,
unique in that he, as well as the other customs officials I met, was
nowhere near fluent in English. English has become the global tongue,
particularly among those who deal with travelers. The Koreans were doing
this on their own terms.
I sat before him and showed him my
certificate of exemption from the 14-day quarantine along with my passport
and the rest. He proceeded to ask me the name and the telephone number of
someone in Korea, albeit less clearly than my telling here indicates. Unlike
other immigration people around the world, he was not in any hurry. Since I
had no name or phone number, having never gotten involved in actually
planning the trip, I called my wife, who suggested I look in the folder of
travel documents she had sent with me. I finally went through the paperwork
that accompanied me and found a name, with a phone number. The customs
agent called the number and miraculously the person on the other end
confirmed that, while not vouching for my integrity, I was known to her.
This was followed by lesser intrusions
until he was satisfied enough to send me to another person at another
table, who reviewed everything he had done, including taking five minutes
to read my exemption from the 14-day quarantine. We also sat facing each
other, me trying to be gracious, he making no effort. He finally allowed me
to take my precious papers and leave. He did not indicate where I should go
beyond a casual waving of his hand in multiple directions. I then wandered
around aimlessly until an English-speaking woman asked me what I was doing. She led me to a third table, and then abruptly sent me to the standard
booth that immigration officials have. The immigration officer knew no
English, and my own Korean had started to develop only an hour or so
before. He read every paper. I could not see which pages he was reading,
but it was clear I fascinated him.
He then passed me along to find my
luggage from a plane that had landed nearly two hours before. I went
through the appropriate panic, and then saw it neatly sitting at the Korean
Air booth. It was a weirdly plaid-patterned bag, selected by my wife for
being garish and therefore impossible even for me not to recognize. Having
taken the bag, I left customs and was given a yellow tag to put around my
neck, and then herded into a fairly large area surrounded by yellow tape. I
was alone with someone I took to be Chinese, and who said nothing but
clearly disliked me. I gestured toward a Starbucks, asking to be allowed to
get some coffee. Request denied. I walked around the enclosure for about an
hour (maybe a bit less), intensely cranky. Finally, I was told that the bus
was outside, and went to it. I was the only passenger, plus one person
supervising me, and the driver.
We drove an hour or so into Seoul, to
the place where a nice girl stuck a stick up my nose and wiggled it around.
I was now being tested for COVID-19, although I think the test should have
taken place before I left Dallas. If I failed the test, I would have to
spend 14 days in quarantine. I had to wait overnight to find out if I was
infected, and in the meantime was sent to a hotel room I would have refused
to enter when I was 22 and with a girl, which happened so infrequently that
you can imagine. Figuring out the lights was tough; mystery solved when I
found there were none, or none relevant to my needs. I was also given a
small plastic bag with a candy bar, orange juice and several items I could
not identify. The bed was on a pedestal, but the pedestal could not readily
be seen. My shins smashed it, and I cried out to a silent world. But in the
morning, to prove Dante wrong, I found that I did not have to give up all
hope. I was released, and irony of all, my hosts had sent a sleek black car
to retrieve me. On my phone was an app that knew where I was and required
me to report in daily.
Now, you may think that this has no
possible geopolitical value, but it is geopolitical to its bones. I saw
Koreans being treated as I had been. The process for entering Korea is
designed for zero-defect operation. Once in the country, the oversight
remains rigorous and is socially enforced. The times I forgot to cover my
mouth and nose with my mask, there was silent staring that even I found
unnerving. This is the secret of how Korea has managed the virus better
than most other countries. There is no split between the public and the
government, and no sense that the government is violating their rights.
Like a war, they see themselves as all in it together.
Korea has been an embattled country,
invaded and occupied by the Chinese and the Japanese, ruled by each with a
singular brutality. The memory of subjugation, particularly by the
Japanese, is burnt into the national soul. They survived by a resistance
built around their national identity, and pursued with a rigor that only a
nation that has been crushed and resurrected can generate. COVID-19 is an
invader, and they will resist at all costs, starting with imposing a
discipline on themselves that would make Americans rebel. (Indeed,
Americans have rebelled in the face of significantly smaller impositions to
contain the virus.) Such discipline is not always there; there have been
riots in Korea. But when the chips are down, and for Korea they are
frequently close to being down, there is a desperate coherence. Even then
there has been resistance from some Christian churches, but not as much as
in America.
(click to enlarge)
The United States has never been occupied
by a foreign power, and its most significant war was waged on itself, with
the South insisting on charting its own path. Americans have a deep-rooted
sense that the country has room for maneuver. Korea knows that it doesn’t
with North Korea, Japan and China surrounding it. There is a sense of
danger and embattlement in Korea that creates a willingness to endure the
intrusion of the state, even if it makes life difficult. They respond to
danger perhaps disproportionately at times, but vigorously.
The United States was created for a
people distrusting the power of the state, and frankly distrusting one
another. It is also a nation that has not suffered the existential loss
that Korea has. Thus, for Americans, everything is not at stake. There is
always room to resist. And so the intrusion of the American state is
limited and resisted. The Korean state was designed to survive, and the
American state was shaped to resist. The Koreans see COVID-19 as
existential, and Americans refuse to agree on what they see, let alone what
ought to be done.
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