Presidential candidate slams Moon for allowing COVID-19 to spread
South Korea is being slammed by a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Moon Jae-in administration failed to secure vaccines as they promised and positive case numbers have exploded over the past month. Amid this disaster, former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl, the leading conservative presidential candidate, attacked the radical leftists whose leadership has failed to stop the virus. Like the former U.S. President Donald Trump, Yoon is unafraid to blame China for the outbreak of the “Wuhan virus.”
The Moon administration has continued to implement strong quarantine measures, including banning more than 2 people from meeting for personal reasons, including dinner, after 6 p.m. The measures are causing significant anger among the public and particularly small business owners.
Yoon met with medical experts to discuss the pandemic on Thursday and argued that the government should have banned people from entering the country from China in early 2020, which was when the virus started to spread significantly in South Korea. “COVID-19 started in China, or Wuhan to be more specific, in December 2019 and the Korean Medical Association and many other medical experts requested that the government strongly restrict people arriving from China,” Yoon said. “The government should have approached this based on science, and I believe that the fact that they did not do so based on science means that they were considering political factors.”
He then used the controversial phrase “Wuhan virus.” He said the “[experts at today’s discussion said that] Pfizer and Moderna developed their vaccine focusing on the Wuhan virus so they are developing another one for the Delta variant and that we need to lower the fatality rate by giving the second dose to people with higher risk as early as possible.”
“The current administration praised themselves for successfully dealing with the pandemic, but the daily confirmed cases surpassed the 2,000 mark due to the fourth wave and our vaccination rate is the lowest among the 38 members of OECD,” he said. “The reason for the existence of government becomes clear during a crisis but this government was not able to prove the reason for their existence.”
The ruling Democratic Party (DP) attacked Yoon for using the term “Wuhan virus.”
“Despite the recommendation by the World Health Organization [WHO], he used ‘Wuhan virus,’ which is discriminatory and xenophobic,” said DP lawmaker Kim Yong-min on Friday. Gyeonggi Gov. Lee Jae-myung, the leading presidential candidate from the DP, released a statement through his press secretary that said, “Yoon blatantly used the phrase that some conservative-leaning online communities or far-right YouTubers use to provoke people to get angrier about China.” He added that “Yoon reminds us of the PPP’s former head Hwang Kyo-ahn who continued to use ‘Wuhan pneumonia.’”
Oh Young-hoon, the press secretary of fellow leftist presidential hopeful Lee Nak-yon, also attacked Yoon, asking him “how low can you go?” He said, “it is just miserable to see that the quality of a presidential candidate from the Republic of Korea’s main opposition party is this low.”
Kang Byung-won, a lawmaker from the DP, told Yoon to “try saying that at the WHO,” and argued that Yoon is trying to create anti-Chinese sentiment for political gain.
The Danish head of a WHO-led team that traveled to China earlier this year to probe the origins of COVID-19 called for closer scrutiny of the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. Dr. Peter Ben Embarek appeared on Denmark’s state-owned TV 2 and said, “It’s interesting that the lab relocated on the 2nd of December 2019: That’s the period where it all started.”
“We know that when you move a lab, it disturbs everything,” he said. “That entire procedure is always a disruptive element in the daily work routine of a lab.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Ben Embarek’s remarks are the biggest departure by a member of the WHO’s team from the team’s earlier view, expressed at a news conference in February, that a laboratory incident was too unlikely to merit further studies. In fact, the WHO has since urged China to share the raw data from its earliest cases of the coronavirus, which first emerged in its central city of Wuhan, saying on Thursday that it was “vitally important” to understand the virus’s origins to prevent future pandemics.
Choe Jae-hyeong, former head of the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection under the Moon administration and a presidential candidate from the conservative camp, is also facing controversy over his latest comments about the government’s role in people’s lives. Earlier this week, he criticized the Moon administration for excessively intervening in people’s lives. “The government’s role is to establish the system and situation to have people live their daily lives freely. It is like giving false hope to say that the government will take care of everyone’s lives,” Choe said. “Did the Moon Jae-in administration, which published a report titled ‘The government that takes responsibility of my life,’ really take responsibility for them? It is the same as a government that is heading toward totalitarianism when they interfere with, regulate, and control people under the name of taking responsibility.”
Park Yong-jin, a lawmaker from the DP, argued that “it is only in Choe’s mind that the government taking care of people’s lives is like interfering in their lives.”
Choe responded that what he meant was that the Moon administration’s excessive regulations weakened freedom in the country. He said he will declare a moratorium on new or expanded regulations during the first 100 days of entering office. He added that he will review all the poor regulations passed during the Moon administration.
