By Bernard Rowan
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The greater society begins to hear calls for resuming safe past practices as awareness grows of a new phase. A few civic leaders spread propaganda out of self-interest. Citizens, officials, military personnel, and others work to adjust back to fighting this disease. Test, isolate, and treat are the watchwords repeated by President Moon Jae-in and the authorities. I believe South Koreans will respond and bring the numbers down.
The second wave (or third) of coronavirus or COVID-19 has begun. Elsewhere, including America, numbers and cases continue to rise. Large gatherings of unsuspecting but foolish people, especially young adults, add to the problems here. Amid returning to school, I think in many places the institutions will revert to all remote learning over the next few months. We don't have a cure yet. That's why. And the best weapon is staying away from spaces where the likelihood of contacting someone who unknowingly has COVID-19 increases, as in large gatherings.
In South Korea, it's disturbing to hear of civic and religious leaders refusing to cooperate. A minority of significant people with power are violating the harm principle. Face-to-face mega-church meetings endanger public health. Take a lesson from Eric Whitacre's beautiful virtual choir arrangements and take your ceremonies and religious observations online.
The United States has seen the stupid use of resistance to masking and social distancing for political posturing or "in the name of freedom." Coronavirus isn't King George in the 18th century or the colonial authorities. I hate to say it, but there are times I feel one can identify a potential Trump supporter by whether he or she wears a mask or social distances. That's a crude but not entirely inaccurate description. It looks like some misguided church leaders in South Korea are using their influence to promote the same misappropriation of freedom.
Science and her more fundamental sister, reason, are the answers. Wearing a mask and social distancing aren't miracle weapons in this fight. However, they're among the few weapons we've got, and we need to use them. Social spaces stand and fall on inculcating respect for others and self. Wearing a mask and social distancing in the COVID-19 era are necessary but insufficient bases of social and self-respect. Social improvement from a Socratic and Confucian view amounts to the continual decrease of ignorance as the basis for behavior. COVID-19 shows we have a long way to go, us humans.
This isn't the time to create false articles of faith. Trusting God over public health authorities and not following scientific public health recommendations is closer to following that other guy! The Devil ― a fallen angel. He fell by seeking equality with God. Leaders peddling their accounts out of pride and self-regard motivate and continue ignorant behavior and evil in our world. That reminds me. Dust off the old movie, Poltergeist III, and think of the antihero, the Reverend Henry Kane. Don't take congregations to a desert of emptiness and death with hostile posturing about the coronavirus.
South Korea now stands as an advanced nation, and I often praise signs and bases of that advance, past and present. I believe the people of South Korea and her capable leaders will turn this new crisis into another chance to show the human love, regard, and power that exists in the Land of the Morning Calm. You're at the forefront of this killer disease's fall return. Fight it with the spirit that rings from so many other fights already won. The next advance is now. Pilseung Korea!
Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
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