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By Hwang Jin-tae
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In a similar vein, before the summit, governments had already been focusing on the role of the state and technology. However, since then, they have paid scant attention to the fact that in South Korea, COVID-19 has not only stimulated the government and the people's creative adaptation, but also provided an opportunity for experimenting with cosmopolitanism against social stigmatization.
In general, it is not difficult to witness phenomena of social stigmatization that treat people, who might effectively be immigrants, minority races or refugees as "germ carriers" or the "virus" themselves, while legitimizing their economic, social, and even physical disadvantages, as the epidemic situation gets worse.
Even after the virus has vanished, social stigma stemming from the virus might be present for longer, plaguing people branded as the virus, which may chronically dent social integration. Concerning this theme, I would like to introduce a tale of three cities in South Korea: Seoul, Daegu and Gwangju.
Seoul is one of the global cities in East Asia. It is spatially implied that globalized Seoul is more vulnerable to the influx of viruses from abroad than other cities. Therefore, shortly after the epidemic broke out, Korean people began to worry about a vague connection between China's virus epicenter, Wuhan, and Daerim, which is nicknamed "Seoul's mini-China," where Korean-Chinese are densely concentrated in the capital.
In Korean society, Daerim came to be viewed as a "risky" area, a fact that was amplified by the mass media. For instance, a Daerim-based gang movie titled "Criminal City" (2017) reflected our collective prejudice against the place, encouraging racism and xenophobia.
Coupling this prevailing prejudice with the emergence of the outbreak, Korean media followed the movie's perspective by criticizing the Korean-Chinese community, such as through issuing a report about the sanitary conditions of Chinese restaurants, which was information irrelevant to the virus spread.
Interestingly and shamefully, there was no case of infection in Daerim until the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 stood at 7,000 nationally, March 7.
Next, let's look at two other cities. For the last four decades, the political regionalism between the southeastern and southwestern parts of South Korea has significantly influenced national politics.
The southeastern region is a stronghold for the conservative political party led by political leaders such as President Park Chung-hee in the 1970s and President Chun Doo-Hwan in the 1980s, and was rapidly industrialized, while the southwestern region is a bedrock for liberal political parties and produced President Kim Dae-Jung and current President Moon Jae-in, and has remained economically underdeveloped.
The cities of Daegu and Gwangju represent the southeastern and southwestern regions, respectively. The 1980 Gwangju Democratic Uprising against unprecedented state violence led by President Chun, known as a "son of Daegu," shows a deep-rooted political cleavage.
International readers might assume that this cleavage was wiped out after democratization. However, this tension reproduces itself not only in the formation of party politics but also in the sphere of everyday life, including through hostile online news comments, such as "Gwangju citizens are bbalgaengi" (literally "reds").
After Daegu emerged as the hotspot for the virus, its citizens were alarmed at the news about the possibility of the city being "contained," which came through the mouth of the ruling party's spokesman. The word, "containment," was interpreted as a state of isolation from the outside, like China's lockdown of Wuhan.
Although government officials explained that this was a total misunderstanding, in their mental maps, the risky territory expanded from Daerim to Daegu.
The reason for that spokesman's resignation is not simply due to just giving incorrect information, but his verbalization touched the mentality of Korean society, which recognizes the effect of spatial isolation, and its resultant social stigmatization, as in the case of Gwangju.
Although the current situation in Daegu is not good, doctors and nurses flock there, and the government has not taken strong containment action as happened in China.
Above all, it is remarkable that the Gwangju city government has agreed to allow two hospitals to take patients from Daegu, and that Gwangju Democratic Uprising memorial groups have sent relief aid to Daegu. The irony of South Korean modern history and this unexpected epidemic have planted the seeds for social reintegration.
As a human geographer, I have been teaching European area studies at Seoul National University for years. In my lectures, I have taught cosmopolitanism as a key concept originally developed by European thinkers such as Immanuel Kant and Ulrich Beck.
Outside of the classroom, however, my students have picked up inconvenient news from Europe such as about hate speech and racist attacks. We awkwardly face the mismatch between the ideals and the reality of Europe.
Surely, making a cosmopolitan world is tough. Kant did not naively believe that only good people can realize cosmopolitanism. He argued that human nature has not only goodness but also "unsocial sociality" that produces conflict and cleavage.
As shown in this tale of three cities in Korea, global society must also welcome this opportunity to experiment with cosmopolitanism, which encourages anti-stigmatism as an essential antibody for socializing unsocial sociality. Let's not stop this experiment even after the COVID-19 crisis ends.
Hwang Jin-tae (dchjt@naver.com) is a research fellow at the Seoul National University Asia Center.
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