Covid Pandemic: How South Korea Contained the Coronavirus Without Lockdowns

Park Young Joon was worried that South Korea could lose control. As director for epidemiological investigations at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, he’d been dispatched to Daegu, a city of 2.5 million in the south, to deal with an urgent situation. A rash of novel coronavirus cases had just emerged among members of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, an obscure and secretive religious group whose services involve close physical contact. The first congregant tested positive on Feb. 17, becoming South Korea’s 31st Covid-19 patient. Soon the number of new daily cases was in double digits, then triple—evidence that an exponential outbreak was in progress. “I remember seeing the triple-digit cases,” Park says, speaking through a translator, “and thinking to myself that this must be what people mean when they use the word ‘surge.’