Photo by Jan Kopriva, Unsplash
Not long ago, China opened its borders, following calls for the zero-COVID policy to be repealed by many Chinese youths and the growing harm the policy brought to the economy. (Covered in “Reasons why China’s zero-COVID policy has been eased”) However, China’s relaxation of the zero-COVID policy was done while many seniors in China had yet to be vaccinated. Hence, like many other countries that had first opened up, there was a quick surge in the amount of cases. That led to countries worldwide imposing quarantine measures and Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test requirements on visitors from China. One country that notably imposed harsh restrictions was Korea. First, Korea required flights from China to land in Incheon International Airport only. Next, Korea made visitors from China go through PCR tests and wear lanyards with QR codes to access the test results. Moreover, they were subjected to a special lane and were guarded by soldiers throughout the process, which did make these visitors uneasy.
Now, from Korea’s perspective and the perspective of other countries, there is some justification to the enhanced measures. First, it is not a surprise that many cases in China have gone undetected, and China’s reports of its COVID-19 cases have not been truthful. Hence, there is reason for Korea and other countries to think that the inflow of visitors from China might worsen the spread of the virus in Korea. Second, Korea’s disease control and prevention agency did report that 80% of imported confirmed cases came from China. Now, while the data again cannot be fully trusted, judging from the large amounts of cases sweeping China throughout late 2022 and early 2023, a reasonable assumption can be made that some of these claims are justified. As such, it can be said that Korea’s measures are reasonable.
Another point to note is that Korea is implementing this against visitors from China, not Chinese citizens. Choi Seung Ho, deputy director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency claimed that the measures will be applied to both Korean nationals and non-Korean nationals, further justifying that some of these measures are reasonable.
However, there is great reason to claim that some of these measures are also rather discriminatory. First of all, while it is important to isolate and test visitors from China, Korea’s treatment of these individuals can be seen to be quite excessive, especially considering the presence of soldiers “guarding” the visitors. COVID cases have been prevalent previously in many other countries, but Korea did not implement these stringent measures previously towards these other countries. Next, a Korean official had also refuted the previous claims on the data of imported cases originating from China as he mentioned that only 5.5% of travellers from China tested positive for COVID-19. Hence, there is definitely ambiguity on the claims of whether these decisions were made in reference to “scientific evidence”. Thirdly, looking at the claims of other countries, like Singapore for example, it is worth considering that severe cases can come from any country at this point, considering how the entire world has been opening up and attempting to live with the virus. Hence, there is a case for these restrictions being discriminatory.
In synthesis, I feel that it is understandable for Korea to have these measures imposed, such as having the PCR tests and quarantining those who have tested positive. It is one thing for the restrictions to be imposed, but evidently, the implementation of the restrictions and the treatment of Chinese have been excessive and discriminatory to a larger extent. That has pushed China to implement retaliatory measures, suspending short term visas for Koreans.
At the end of the day, the main point for improving diplomatic relations and all kinds of relationships is about give and take. Korea has to improve its implementation of measures against visitors from China, because many other countries like France have had similar restrictions, but have had a rather different attitude towards China. At the same time, for China, while I agree that the treatment of their citizens have not been right, their retaliatory measures against Korea is not the solution and it would simply worsen and escalate tensions between the two countries. As for now, we shall see how these measures unfold, and whether there will be a resolution to this conflict over COVID-restrictions.
References
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/11/south-korea-covid-rules-not-discriminatory-to-chinese-travelers.html
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