Number of cases, while still tiny by western standards, is on the rise
In April, South Korea was being held up as an example of how to contain the coronavirus outbreak. A combination of aggressive testing, contact-tracing and isolation had helped it flatten the curve, despite its proximity to China – the centre of the original outbreak – and without a single day of lockdown.
The World Health Organization singled it out for praise, the government embarked on a campaign of “coronavirus diplomacy” with countries struggling with much bigger outbreaks and death tolls, and released a detailed guide to managing a pandemic, the South Korean way.
