Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Vaccine pass system for teenagers pushed back to March
A visitor scans a QR code of a vaccine pass app to enter a large discount store in Seoul, Friday. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
Current social distancing measures extended to Jan. 16
By Bahk Eun-ji
Children aged 12 to 18 will be subject to the COVID-19 vaccine pass system from March 1, a month later than the government's initial plan, following protests and concerns from parents over its hasty implementation.
The health and education ministries said, Friday, that the system will be applied to the age group in March when the new semester begins, for accessing multiuse facilities including private academies or “hagwon,” libraries, study cafes and PC rooms.
A one-month grace period will also be applied during March, and violators won't be fined until April 1.
The government initially planned to enforce the vaccine pass system for the age group from Feb. 1, as the number of daily infection cases here has spiked. But this plan faced strong criticism from children and parents for virtually forcing vaccination without full information about the possible side effects on youth. The plan was also denounced for violating students' rights to education.
“This measure is expected to reduce confusion among students and parents by giving them sufficient time to decide whether to get the vaccine or not,” the education ministry said in a press release.
The government said that it would consider not applying the vaccine pass policy to the age group once the current uptick in the number of daily infections has subsided.
Besides the policy for children, the government also decided to continue the current social distancing measures for two more weeks until Jan. 16. The cap on private gatherings will remain at four people and business operations of multiuse facilities must stop at 9 or 10 p.m.
Department stores and discount stores measuring 3,000 square meters or more will be newly included in the vaccine pass system from Jan. 10, but a grace period will be allowed until Jan. 16.
Such large stores have been excluded from the vaccine pass system due to difficulties in controlling and checking visitors, but the government decided to include them, following a controversy over the fairness of not doing so, when requiring the vaccine pass to access other multiuse facilities.
The government's decision to extend the current strict social distancing measures for two more weeks is bringing a strong backlash from small business operators and self-employed people.
In order to ease their financial difficulties, the government will provide 5 million won ($4,204) of damage compensation each for about 550,000 small business owners and self-employed during the first quarter of next year.
“The Korean community will have to focus on curbing the virus spread for two more weeks,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said during a meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul. “If the virus situation stabilizes, we'll actively consider easing the measures.”
In the meantime, the country reported 4,875 new infections for Thursday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The number of critically ill patients remained high at 1,056, and 108 died.
The number of new Omicron variant cases soared by 269 for Thursday, raising the total to 894. It was the largest number of daily new cases since the infections were detected in Korea for the first time on Dec. 1. The sudden surge is mainly because the country on Thursday began using a newly developed PCR reagent, which can detect the variant in a test within three to four hours, much faster than the previous three to five days, according to the KDCA.