MISES WIRE

Stephen Rowland
* Chungnam National University Visiting Prof
* Mises Institute Korea Visiting Scholar

I'm an American living in South Korea with my Korean wife and son. Before I begin, let me say that I enjoy many aspects of living and working in Korea and only point out the following problems in hopes of sparking change.

After four years, the stars aligned on December 26th, and my wife and I could leave our son with her mom to go to church together. After church, we wanted to have lunch together at our favorite restaurant in the area. It is a nice traditional-style Japanese restaurant with about ten tables. There was a bar-style counter, but it was blocked off, presumably to follow the occupancy requirements. Upon walking into any business, a QR code scan via cellphone is required to keep track of everyone's movements at all times. This sort of privacy violation is why many news outlets praised South Korea as having "beaten COVID."

Once you scan your code, it not only keeps track of where you are at that moment, but it also beeps, or not, if you have had the required number of COVID vaccinations. I had been waiting and hoping that the vaccine's ineffectiveness and the myriad anti-mandate protests around the world would bring the health officials to their senses and not enforce this draconian measure in this "free" country. This is not the case. Back in the restaurant, the scanner did not beep properly with my QR code, so the staff asked my wife if I had received my shots. Since I had not, they said that I could not sit with her, a vaccinated person. This small restaurant, with ten tables that would fill up with the lunch rush in mere minutes, was asking me to sit at a four-person table alone while my wife sat at a different 4-person table alone and eat. This would inconvenience later customers as they would have to wait outside in the cold until the two tables were free. Rather than put up with this discrimination which all patrons in the restaurant overheard, we left.

I ask you, dear reader, what is the scientific reasoning behind allowing an unvaccinated person to sit in the restaurant, eat food without a mask, and possibly speak with his wife at a different table, perhaps increasing the droplets that would spread from my unclean lips? I submit that laws such as this inconvenience the non-compliant and are not based on science. 

My story may seem like a minor inconvenience to some, but it will only worsen. South Korea is often held up as a free and comfortable democracy because the people are very compliant with government regulations. Wearing masks was already commonplace in Korea and many parts of Asia, when one was actually sick, that is. In March 2020, masks becoming a firm recommendation was enough to get mask usage up to, in my personal experience, over 90%. Later in the year, it became a law everywhere, outside, at the gym, etc. The masks mainly were an inconvenience and added expense, especially in March 2020 when masks were hard to find in the store. But now, it is frustrating to have to continue to wear them outside when your whole body is covered up, and you cannot get any sunlight for Vitamin D. It is also crushing to drop my son off at preschool wearing his teddy bear mask to play with his friends whose smiles he has never seen. The only people you see outside these days without a mask on are government service employees or smokers. It seems the poison-filled smoke emanating from cigarettes scares off the virus, so it's OK for them to stand right outside of a restaurant in groups of three or four.  

In the beginning, the QR code scan was just a way to track and trace, and you could avoid it sometimes by writing your phone on a piece of paper; of course, I'd never put a fake number to maintain privacy. Recently, the beeping was added to show you are a good citizen with the correct number of shots. I'd say two jabs, but we all know that the number will keep rising. Once the passport is fully implemented, unvaccinated individuals can still eat alone at restaurants and cafes. Yet, they cannot enter department stores or large retail stores unless they have a recent negative PCR test. Masking seems to have been helpful enough that the mandate is unnecessary. Koreans tend to wear masks in high-risk situations like shopping centers and public transportation. 

Good economists like to mention something called The Unseen. No, it's not a scary movie. It's what happens when a law has good intentions, but unexpected, often unnoticed, consequences arise. Here is one that I would not have expected. Korea has the same Big Tech/Big Government leviathan in operation, and it is no different when it comes to the Covid passport. Vision impaired individuals have trouble scanning the app because they cannot see the scanner. Thus, they have to ask someone to help them and can cause delays for others behind them and be overall embarrassing for them.  

On a positive note, at least one petition is on the Korean President's website with at least 300 thousand signers. The petitioner sites the vaccine's questionable effectiveness and side effects as reasons that young people should not be forced to take the shot. Also, expecting busy unvaccinated students to get a PCR test before going into after-school private learning facilities is untenable because many students have these classes 6-7 nights a week. 

More good news is that several speed bumps have sprung up to slow the rollout of the vaccine passports, initially set to be officially enforced in February. A court in Seoul has suspended the rule about after-school learning facilities, and the government has pushed the law for teenagers back until March 2022. Various groups are rejecting them in the name of students' right to education, not to mention fundamental privacy rights.  

There is a lack of empathy for individuals who do not trust a vaccine with dubious testing procedures and fired whistleblowers or are merely unconcerned about the virus's new, less dangerous mutations. Every medical decision should be left up to the individual, and that is a basic tenet of morality that every government, nay every single human, should respect.

태그 : #건강 #경찰국가 #큰정부 

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