Based on an essay by Katsumi Murotani published in the monthly magazine Hanada, this article examines how South Korea’s so-called “K-quarantine” relied on conscription, a national identification system, smartphone location data, card-payment records, and security-camera footage. It contrasts this with the voluntary public cooperation behind Japan’s “Stay Home” response and criticizes Japanese media and left-wing opinion that call for Japan to “learn from South Korea.”

May 27, 2020
If a country has a “mature national consciousness,” the majority of its people will respond to a government call to “Stay Home” even when it has no coercive force.
This is probably something South Korea’s “mature citizens” cannot even imagine.
The following is the continuation of an essay by Katsumi Murotani, one of the world’s foremost experts on South Korea, published in the monthly magazine Hanada, required reading for every Japanese citizen, which went on sale yesterday, under the title Moon Jae-in’s “K-Quarantine” and the Lie of “Learn from South Korea.”
If one reads his genuine essay, one will keenly realize how deeply Japanese media, especially television stations, are under the operations of South Korea and China.
Testing that treats people like criminals
“K-quarantine” keeps testing anyone suspected of infection.
Those who test positive are isolated in hospitals even if they are asymptomatic.
Later, asymptomatic and mildly ill patients were moved to accommodation facilities other than hospitals.
The first group to be treated as suspicious was the believers of the new religious movement Shincheonji, which had caused a cluster infection.
Since 2,000 believers gathered in an enclosed religious facility in Daegu City and conducted religious rites for a long time, there was absolutely “reason for suspicion” in that case.
But were believers who had not participated in the Daegu event and lived in completely different places also suspicious?
If testing is extended that far, it is only natural that the positive rate will fall.
South Korea’s quarantine authorities examined all 200,000 people listed on the believer roster submitted by Shincheonji and tested those deemed “suspicious.”
In the case of Seoul City, all 70,000 believers living in the city were tested.
The result was the discovery of “two positive cases.”
By blaming everything, no matter what, on Shincheonji, they were probably trying to escape responsibility for having allowed entry from China without checks.
Furthermore, they identified and tested people who might have had close contact with positive cases by using smartphone location data and card-payment records.
Such mass testing was possible, first, because the Park Geun-hye administration had stockpiled large quantities of PCR test kits after the spread of in-hospital infections during the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS, outbreak.
The fact that South Korea is a “test-kit superpower” is actually an achievement of the Park Geun-hye administration.
The Moon Jae-in administration’s specialty is “wrestling in another man’s loincloth.”
It took Park Geun-hye’s achievement and made it its own.
Second, in a country with conscription, doctors stationed at public health centers and elsewhere as alternatives to military service, as well as military doctors and military medics, could be mobilized.
The religious event in Daegu City took place in February, but even in late April complaints were heard from those mobilized as alternatives to military service, saying, “Not only have we not received our daily allowances, but even travel and accommodation expenses have still not been paid.”
When they pressed the relevant agencies by saying, “Our travel expenses have not been paid either,” they were reportedly cursed at, “Were you doing this for money?”
This, too, is “everyday South Korea” for South Korea watchers.
Because hospitalization of new coronavirus patients was given top priority, asymptomatic infected people occupied hospital beds, and there were many cases in Daegu City in which seriously ill patients with other diseases could not be hospitalized and died.
Many of the suspicious people who had been at gay clubs in Itaewon used false names on customer lists because they feared being exposed as gay.
It is also common for them to avoid card payments.
Even as of May 11, the Hankyoreh newspaper reported that more than half of the customers who had been at the gay clubs in Itaewon, 3,100 people, could not be contacted.
Then came a measure typical of South Korea.
They said they would identify and corner the relevant people using card-payment records, smartphone location records, and security-camera footage.
On the premise of such measures, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said on May 11, “For people who cannot be reached, we will not hesitate to track them down, including home visits by police and testing personnel.”
People who had been in Itaewon were treated as “criminals,” regardless of whether they were gay or not.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun also stated on the 12th, “It is only a matter of time, and we will track down every visitor who was in Itaewon.”
It sounds as though they are saying, “Give up and turn yourself in.”
The budget for opinion operations toward Japan increased 3.3-fold
“K-quarantine” will probably be translated into English as something like “K-prevention of epidemics,” but whether such a term works outside South Korea is another matter.
Nor is it merely a matter of words.
It is a method that is impossible unless the country has conscription and a national identification-number system, and unless no criticism arises even when the authorities freely monitor the everyday activities of ordinary citizens using location information, card records, and security cameras.
If the Japanese government began South Korea-like surveillance of citizens for the purpose of “eradicating coronavirus,” the first people to raise loud cries against “human-rights suppression” would probably be the leftists who are now crying, “Learn from South Korea.”
According to President Moon, “K-quarantine has become the global standard.”
But has even one Western country adopted a surveillance method like South Korea’s?
There are countries conducting mass testing on the scale of South Korea.
But those countries are in fact producing more than twenty times as many deaths as Japan.
If a country has a “mature national consciousness,” the majority of its people will respond to a government call to “Stay Home” even when it has no coercive force.
This is probably something South Korea’s “mature citizens” cannot even imagine.
Watching South Korean reports, one begins to think that Japan is in a tragic situation where masks are still unavailable, testing cannot be done because test kits are lacking, a considerable portion of infected people are being “abandoned” at home, and bodies of people who died of coronavirus are lying in the streets of Tokyo.
It is true that there was a case in Tokyo in which a seriously ill person collapsed on the street and died soon afterward.
Regarding “abandonment at home,” the JoongAng Ilbo reported on May 7, 2020, under the headline “Japan, Coronavirus Medical Collapse… One in Four Infected People Abandoned at Home.”
The source was Kyodo News, and the content was that, among infected people, 63.8 percent were hospitalized, 22.8 percent were recuperating at home, and 9.9 percent were in accommodation facilities.
They changed the wording for the 22.8 percent who were “recuperating” at home by their own choice, without entering accommodation facilities, into “abandoned” at home, and pushed the line “Japan, Coronavirus Medical Collapse.”
It is an editorial “trick” typical of a newspaper of the anti-Japanese tribe.
However, TV Asahi’s act of editing and broadcasting a doctor’s comment criticizing the “reckless securing of large numbers of tests” as if he had expressed the exact opposite opinion is an even greater “trick” than that of the JoongAng Ilbo.
Even when criticized, they did not honestly apologize, but issued an incomprehensible comment, saying, “There were parts in which we neglected how it would be received.”
TV Asahi’s response is, indeed, far too “South Korean.”
What inevitably arises in connection with this is the report that the South Korean Embassy in Japan’s budget for opinion operations was increased in 2020 to 3.3 times the previous year’s level, as reported by Yonhap News on August 29, 2019.
In connection with this, Ambassador Nam Gwan-pyo to Japan reportedly “said that the plan was to target the business world and mass media that lead Japanese public opinion,” according to the same agency on December 23, 2019.
We must regard “K-money” as wriggling behind the world of Japan’s mass media.