President Park Geun-hye: `MERS is different from SARS`

During her visit on Friday to the National Medical Center, a designated MERs treatment facility for isolation, Korean President Park Geun-hye said MERS was different from SARS in many aspects. “In case of SARS, the goal was to prevent a disease, which has already spread across China or Southeast Asia. However, this time, MERS has been brought to Korea by a local resident and has spread through contacts inside medical institutions,” added Park, explaining why responses are different between the two epidemics.

President Park’s remarks seemed to target growing criticism over the current administration’s belated responses to MERS compared to the thorough SARS containment during the Roh Moo-hyun administration in 2003. Back then, the government organized a pan-government epidemic control center to contain the infectious disease at earlier stages as the respiratory disease had widely spread in neighboring countries. On the contrary, the incumbent administration may have failed to pay much attention to MERS as it originates from the Middle East, far away from Korea. However, no words can justify the Park Geun-hye administration’s belated and unorganized responses without even a control tower for 20 days since the first case of MERS was confirmed in Korea.

If Park’s comments intended to emphasize that MERS is different from SARS as local patients fell sick with MERS, it sounds even stranger. Although the epidemic has been spreading more rapidly than 2003, the government’s responses were much less in intensity than those of 2003. On Tuesday when the situation entered a state of emergency as the first death from MERS virus and the tertiary infection were reported, President Park visited a Creative Economy Innovation Center in South Jeolla Province acting as usual. President Park said, “MERS is an infectious disease that we’ve never experienced before.” But that was the same to SARS. Rather, MERS’ corona virus is SARS-like virus and it has been known to the medical arena since 2012.

Comments from President Park, who belatedly visited the MERS quarantine facility, were disappointing. Rather than showing an attitude of responsible who is accountable for the government’s mistakes and management of the state affairs, President Park made excuses and criticized others. On the next day after Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon’s emergency briefing on TV, President Park hurried to come to the quarantine headquarters and said, “Local government’s independent acting may cause confusion.” Will it be a wrong guess if interpreting the comment as an attempt to keep in check the mayor from the opposition party? President Park’s disappointing words remind me of her criticism on the special pardon made by the former administration 10 years ago, while ignoring the illegal fund provided 3 years ago for the 2012 presidential election, when the Sung Wan-jong list scandal first erupted right before the April 29 by-election.

ysshin@donga.com