Seoul mayor praises residents' response to COVID-19

The Korea Times

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Seoul mayor praises residents' response to COVID-19

Posted : 2020-06-04 18:46

Updated : 2020-06-04 18:46

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, left, and anthropologist Jared Diamond participate in the Cities Against COVID-19 2020 summit, Thursday/ Screen Capture from YouTube

By Kim Se-jeong

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon praised residents of the capital Thursday for sacrificing their civil liberties for safety and respecting government advisories during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the Cities Against COVID-19 2020 summit, Park said, "The victory is attributed to residents who voluntarily followed sanitation guidelines and kept social distancing." His comments came during an online talk with Jared Diamond, an anthropologist and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Guns, Germs and Steel" (1997).

Koreans predominantly kept social distancing and wore masks.

The CAC2020 summit was organized by the city government with the aim to share cities' responses to COVID-19 and Thursday's talk with Diamond was one of the summit's 11 sessions discussing the pandemic and civilization.

Diamond said he hoped the world would learn to stop competition and work together to solve global problems.

"I would like to be optimistic that the COVID-19 pandemic will teach the world that global problems such as COVID and climate change will require global solutions and COVID-19 finally made the world stop thinking about competition between different parts of the world and recognize that we all have to work together to solve world problems because if we don't work together, we will all fail together."

Despite his hope, the world continues to see tension between China and the U.S. escalating amid the pandemic.

Asked what the greatest change brought by the pandemic was, the scholar answered, "The biggest change for the world is that the world for the first time faces a global problem and recognized it as a global problem. There were other global problems, like climate change, but the world didn't recognize it as a common problem. Why? Because climate change kills people slowly… In the case of COVID, when someone is infected with COVID, they may die in a few days."

The scholar also said it's fortunate for the world to have a model like Seoul and South Korea which are successfully handling the pandemic.

"When dealing with a crisis, whether it's personal or a bigger, what is important is having a model. Seoul and Korea have an importance as the model. Other countries can look at what Korea has done and learn how you've dealt with it successfully with the crisis," Diamond said.

Also he said the world should learn from failing models, such as the U.S., which refuses to learn from others and is paying the price for it.

Asked about inequality and the pandemic, Diamond said COVID-19 made rich Americans think about poor Americans because the pandemic endangered their safety due to the breakdown in basic services mostly provided by poorer people.

The dialogue between Park and Diamond took place on the fourth day of the online summit.

In a video meeting with 42 mayors around the world Tuesday, Park stressed the importance of solidarity and cooperation among cities in tackling the infectious disease and proposed establishing a new international organization to facilitate this.

Today, the last day of the summit, participants will talk about the pandemic's impact on sports and how various technologies have helped cities respond to the pandemic.

skim@koreatimes.co.kr