Virus politics oversh studies South Korea
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This year isn’t the first time South Korea has weathered a coronavirus epidemic. In 2015, unlike many other countries except for a few in the Middle East, South Korea saw a virulent outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a strain of coronavirus in the same family as SARS-coV-2, the virus causing today’s COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike many countries, however, South Korea’s management – or lack thereof – of MERS turned the country into the second-largest site of infection worldwide. As a South Korean native, that made UWM graduate student So Hyung Lim wonder: What made the country so susceptible to the disease? The answer, she found, was not in biology; it was in politics. A history of corruption
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Lim is working toward her PhD in geography at UWM. Her recent paper, published in the journal Territory, Politics, and Governance with her advisor, associate professor of geography Kristin Sziarto, explores the South Korean response to MERS and how the nation’s policies led to a more severe outbreak than its neighbors. The severity of MERS came as a surprise, she said, because just 13 years before, South Korea had skated through an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.
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“It was a bit of a complimentary moment for South Korea, but I also saw that there were not any changes or planning for future outbreaks,” Lim noted. “Actually, circumstances worsened in terms of privatization and deregulation. Between 2002 and 2015, public health became worse, and worse, and worse.” That, she added, was a holdover of the country’s past under dictator Park Chung-hee, who assumed leadership in 1961 after a military coup and ruled as president until
So
