Kopkind Colony

by Kristin R. Pak/ 이영숙

A continuing series of dispatches from Kopkind participants, advisers, guests and friends on life in coronavirus time as they observe it.

Letter From Seoul

Seoul

Masks have always been common in Korea. People wear loose ones to avoid tanning their faces or to cover makeup-less mugs. Instead of calling in sick with a cold, they are expected to work with a mask to protect their coworkers. Terrible air pollution prompts about half the people to wear masks, and since antiquity, masks have come out every spring, when the Gobi Desert blankets east Asia with fine sand during Yellow Dust Season. Since the onset of the pandemic, masks have been mandated on all public transportation, including taxis, in Seoul and its suburbs. Nearly everyone complies, with drivers and other riders reminding maskless passengers of the requirement. No one takes violent offense; people are always in your business in Korea. Until late August, following a right-wing rally that caused a spike in infections, masks weren’t mandated here in most other settings. It was largely unnecessary, since almost everyone already wears them, although some establishments had posted signs requiring them.

This past spring, after returning to Seoul from a visit to New York, I’d sit with friends in restaurants and parks discussing reports from the United States about mask fury and toilet paper hoarding and fights over hand sanitizer. Although Korea was “on pause,” we never locked down like US cities. After the crisis began in Daegu, with a member of a secretive Christian church who was a “super spreader,” the government response here and the public’s trust in that response made the difference.

Masks are commonplace. Test results within 24 hours are the only acceptable standard. Everyone in quarantine receives government provisions, including non-citizens. People accept contact tracing because it’s in everyone’s interest — and, we love drinking and socializing with friends.

Besides long-established mask wearing, other aspects of Korean culture and history helped contain Covid-19. The 2015 MERS outbreak had put disaster plans in place, and also activated a sense of solidarity among Koreans. As during the 1997 IMF crisis, when faced with existential threats, Koreans shift from competitiveness to a “together we can overcome” approach. Furthermore, as the national and local governments’ policies proved effective, public trust in the official response soared. In April elections, the incumbent party won by a landslide.

In May, Korea fell out of the top 10 countries worst hit by the virus. By the end of July, we were ranked number 74, with six deaths per million. In contrast, the United States was number one, with 465 deaths per million. While the US had about 70,000 new cases per day, here we’d get panicky if 60 arose. By August, US fatalities exceeded 170,000; in Korea the dead number just over 300. Even with the great difference in population, there’s no comparison.

South Korea, historically in a highly paternalistic relationship with the United States, is not looking to the US to show the way anymore. In some scenarios, like the run-up to the November elections, the US should take cues from the ROK. Here, elections were held with an extended early voting period to curtail waiting and crowding. At polling stations, floor markings made social distancing easy, and both temperature monitoring and disposable gloves were provided. As a Korean American, I know that differences in cultural norms and values would make some of the other ways Koreans have stemmed the pandemic much harder to transfer to the US.

In addition to the two-week pause, involving intense social distancing, the government has tackled the pandemic aggressively with public education campaigns and extensive contact tracing. Text messages inform people about the routes newly diagnosed patients took for several days leading up to diagnosis. Anyone who had been in the same places as a confirmed patient can get tested for free. Testing centers have been set up across the country. True to the cliché of South Korea’s “hurry-up” culture, results within 24 hours by text message are the only acceptable standard.

South Korea isn’t looking to the US to show the way anymore.

People who test positive, or who have been in close contact with someone positive, are quarantined at home with provisions delivered to their door by the government: rice, ramen, Spam, masks, garbage bags for biohazard, water, vegetables, disinfectant, toilet paper. Those under quarantine are also assigned a case worker who checks in on them several times a day to monitor their mental health during isolation. This occurs regardless of the patient’s immigration or citizenship status. The government understands that the virus also disregards these legal distinctions. Such measures help residents who are threatened by disease feel that they haven’t been abandoned, plus it’s in everyone’s interest to contain the virus, even if it means extensive contact tracing.

Contact tracing uses smartphone GPS, security cameras, credit and bank card purchases, and transit card usage. (When a Covid cluster in a foreigner- and gay-friendly neighborhood was sensationalized by a right-wing Christian media outlet, some identifying information was not sent out anymore, like people’s age and citizenship, which could stigmatize foreigners.) Recently, people have been compelled to scan QR codes with their phones, thus sharing their contact information (name, phone number, address) when they enter an establishment that has been known to be the source of outbreak clusters like nightclubs, hostess bars, karaoke rooms, and churches.

Why do people tolerate such surveillance? In so densely populated a country, it’s impossible to do much without someone watching you, even more so in the Seoul metro area, where half of the country’s population lives. South Korea is the most cashless country in the world, and we aren’t going to start using cash again anytime soon. Some purchases are even done through contactless transactions using our phones, whose user agreements allow collection of data. Virtually everyone has a smartphone, and Koreans love convenience. The only thing Koreans love more is drinking and socializing with coworkers and friends, so the high-tech tracing is accepted. Finally, there is the necessary relationship between effective, trustworthy leadership and public commitment to the idea of a shared fight and a shared fate.

Kristin R. Pak/이영숙 has returned to live in Korea after immigrating to the United States. She co-founded and served as the policy director of Solidarity and Political Engagement of Adoptees in Korea (SPEAK), which educates society about the adoption industry to foster critical analysis with the aim of ending intercountry adoption. She is an English professor at Seokyeong University in Seoul. In the US, she had taught English to adult immigrants in New York. She was a Kopkind participant in 2013.

Scenes From a Pandemic is a Kopkind/Nation magazine collaboration. This piece appeared on thenation.com on August 26, 2020. We thank Katrina vanden Heuvel, D.D. Guttenplan and The Nation crew.

Bonus: A Poster From Vietnam

“Vietnam, with a population of 100 million, has had no fatalities from COVID-19 as of early July,” write the authors of “CoronaShock and Socialism,” the third in a multi-part series of studies on international responses to the pandemic from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, directed by our friend Vijay Prashad. The whole report is fascinating and handsomely illustrated. An excerpt:

On March 30, … the [Vietnamese] government announced a national pandemic. The Ministry of Health posted a music video to explain the concept of physical distancing and hand washing; this video went viral on Tik Tok, where young people created a dance to go with it. The message was broadcast within days. Telecommunications firms – including private companies – sent three billion messages about COVID-19 to those with mobile phones. Masks were mandated in public and alcohol-based hand sanitisers were distributed and made available for sale everywhere. Schools and religious sites were all immediately closed.

The government directed public sector units to produce necessary equipment, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and ventilators, as well as hand sanitizer and medicines. There was enough industrial capacity that could be directed to produce these goods without any concerns about price gouging, since these are public sector enterprises. On 8 April, the government of Vietnam sent 450,000 units of PPE to the United States in an act of solidarity.

Vietnam recorded its first Covid deaths on July 31. In total, 34 people have died there. The US death toll is 183,000.

by Gregg DeChirico

A continuing series of dispatches from Kopkind participants, advisers, guests and friends on life in coronavirus time as they observe it.

Grief in Florida

’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind…

—William Shakespeare

Fort Myers, Florida

The term 2020 is associated with visual acuity, but chronologically 2020 has been a year of blindsiding trauma. I have witnessed and survived a plague before, that one ignored by Reagan’s White House when I lived in Greenwich Village from 1977 to ’88. AIDS took 34 friends, lovers, and colleagues before I stopped counting and fled the city in grief.

Now the plague’s name has changed, but the circus of obfuscation for political gain remains the same. That and death, as the US toll from Covid-19 exceeds 170,000.

With death comes grief, and its stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—a cycle I see distorted in the chaos around me.

This time, I live in the great state of denial… Florida. Denial offered a sublime state of bliss in March, when the kids came down for Spring Break, and Governor DeSantis held off shutting down beaches and bars until it was almost over, conceding to community leaders and medical experts as Covid cases were starting to multiply. And so the kids went home—to Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York… The rest is history.

Except, Florida didn’t let go of denial; it reopened for business on May 4. When the filter of rose-colored glasses finally fell away to the harsh light of reality, blissful ignorance turned to anger.

Anger takes various irrational forms. I live in a working-class neighborhood in Lee County. Here the roads and strip mall lots are dominated by pickup trucks. Some are shiny, though rarely new. Others are battered, rusted, their beds littered with McDonald’s packaging, crushed cans, tools, everything pushed to a corner and held in place by a tire. Virtually all bear insignia—the flag, the Christian fish, Trump/Pence 2020, the badge of some branch of the armed services, an AK47 decal, if not a fully stocked gun rack mounted inside across the rear window. Subtlety having taken a back seat to bold statement in recent months, Confederate symbols, also common, have graduated from four-by-six-inch decals to four-by-six-foot flags, snapping crisply in the wind.

Grief in Florida: Doctors Without Borders sent a triage unit to Immokalee to treat migrant farm workers and track the viral spread. This was not widely publicized. The governor, like the president, blames the workers for spiking infections. In the great state of denial, blissful ignorance turned to anger.

This is still an agricultural region. Tomatoes are a prime commodity, with other warm-weather crops. Harvesting depends on migrant workers, the majority of them Mexican. Despite their intimate connection to Ag profit and the state’s economy, DeSantis publicly echoes Trump in blaming farm workers for Florida’s spiking infections.

Most of the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 migrants converge in or near Immokalee, in neighboring Collier County, surrounded by cypress swamps. They live in tight quarters, often in complex multigenerational families, and ride to work in groups. Hand sanitizer and masks were not made available to them. Maligned as “illegals,” they were denied testing and treatment. It is no wonder the virus spiked here. More surprising is that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) sent a triage unit to Immokalee to help treat patients and track the viral spread. This was not widely publicized. I learned of it while inquiring about volunteer opportunities. Had I volunteered with MSF, I would likely have been recruited to accompany the triage unit on to the Democratic Republic of Congo to assist with ongoing Ebola outbreaks. If I were 20 years younger, I’d have gone.

Out of economic and psychological necessity, I took a job with one of the Big Box Essential Businesses, but I am a naturalist at heart, most content when immersed in a wild setting, captivated by most anything that crosses my path. I love snakes, even the venomous species, among the most highly evolved of all reptiles. However, most people react to snakes with a compulsion to kill. Case in point, my co-worker, Joe Z., ordinarily humble, helpful, affable beyond measure. Joe and I were talking casually about local wildlife when he declared that he will drive his truck onto the sidewalk if necessary to kill any snake he sees.

I tried reasoning, most snakes are benign unless provoked…, but a sentence scarcely passed my lips when his face contorted and he flew into a rant. “They” are… “snakes! They are evil.” Something about Adam and Eve, and how “we” lost everything. “Remember the apple, she got it from the snake!” Faced with his conviction, all I could manage to say was, “Oh, Joe, I used to like you.” To which he laughed agreeably, because he thought I was joking.

It struck me later that Joe is deeply mad. Spiritually, he feels he has been robbed. He blames snakes and seeks retribution through their wanton execution, but the enemy could be anything: face masks, BLM, Democrats, Republicans, Confederate flags, libtards, Muslims, migrants, vote by mail. Everywhere across the country, fear and uncertainty opens a Pandora’s box of festering vitriol, with causes both real and imagined, crossing all communities, in all directions, and becoming amplified as we approach November’s elections.

Anger having failed to resolve grief, elections—our flawed collective bargaining session where winner takes all—is unlikely to, either.

Bargaining of this sort is more likely to prime the losing side to retaliate. At work, I have overheard several break-room conversations about how many guns and what types people have, and where they buy ammunition—prices skyrocket weekly—specifically in preparation for the election. I told a co-worker that I don’t own a gun. Shocked, he later texted me an ad for a $359 Smith & Wesson .38: “Good deal!” The text wasn’t as unsettling as his apparent certainty that armed resistance is imminent. How can we bargain for fairness in a democratic process when civility is off the table, each side bludgeoning the other with demands and threats? It is depressing to think about.

Depression is something most of us know in this grief-struck time. My neighbor burst into tears the other day, standing 10 feet from me, both of us masked. “I can’t take it anymore,” she kept saying, before disappearing behind her door. Who isn’t depressed about a total disruption of life, many unemployed, facing economic ruin, others shut off from ailing relatives and friends? We have become a housebound, home-shopping, home-schooling, Door-Dashing, day-drinking society, castaways from the past, without a clear plan for the future.

Acceptance is the final stage of grief. But is it in this case? Especially when there is a constant flux of people experiencing different stages in different ways, with varying frequencies. When the mere idea of having to accept this as “the new normal” sets the cycle anew.

It is no longer a cycle but a perpetual state of social grief.

As a counter to its weight, I retreat to the natural wild, a world I understand, where the laws are fixed, cyclical, seeking balance. Through the eye of nature, I look for renewal, for calm, and hope to be spared from another hurricane. Speaking of denial…

Gregg DeChirico is a specialist in exotic plants. He is a member of Kopkind’s board of directors, a longtime dear friend, who once lived at Tree Frog Farm.

Scenes From a Pandemic is a Kopkind/Nation magazine collaboration. This piece originally appeared on August 12, 2020 on The Nation‘s website. We thank Katrina vanden Heuvel, D.D. Guttenplan and The Nation crew.

Bonus: A Photo From a Teacher

Back to school? Aaron Talley, who participated in Kopkind’s political camp in 2015, sent this photograph of his old middle-school classroom in Chicago. In the next installment of the Kopkind/Nation pandemic series, he will have a dispatch from the limbo state of remote learning. Watch for it! August 19 on thenation.com. August 24 here, plus a very special bonus.