Chill, Korea, just Chill

I know I went from not posting anything to a new post every day (don't worry, it won't last), but I have to tell everyone this news:

My school is temporarily shut down because of Swine Flu.

Just to give everyone a general idea of how the Shin Chan (Swine Flu) is affecting Korea, I'll tell you how this came about. Obviously there's a Swine Flu pandemic going on. Now, this has been slowly building since August (for us). Unless I'm mistaken, the public schools in Seoul have been closed this whole week.

I looked up a couple statistics, and I thought I'd give you an idea of how serious it is here. (There are roughly 48 million people in South Korea.) This past week, there were an average of 8,857 new cases of Swine Flu every day in South Korea. As of now, there have been 42 Swine flu deaths. Of the tens of thousands of people infected, that's a small margin. But I'm not writing to express the statistics, which will be moot practically as I write this.

The point is, South Korea is really afraid of the flu right now. There have been several quarantines and whatnot, but one of the results of this outbreak is socially acceptable xenophobia. I'm not going to describe the xenophobic experiences I've had since arriving in South Korea. Though they're annoying and insulting (the episodes, not the people), Koreans as a whole aren't awful to foreigners. But the fact is that several hagwons and schools have quarantined foreign teachers, but not their other teachers. Most schools tell teachers that they can't leave the country (though they can still travel in South Korea, which makes no sense. It's obvious that Swine Flu is already in the borders). We have been asked to avoid the foreign parts of town. I've had many people put on masks because I sat next to them. If you need to get people out of your personal bubble, all you have to do is cough and there will be a wide berth around you wherever you are.

The flu has killed some children. It makes sense that several of the private schools shut down this week for that very reason. Even if it's only a PR tactic (there were a couple cases of actual Swine flu in our school, but I'm fairly sure PR was a bigger factor), it's at least an indication that the schools are doing something. This is a country where people go to work no matter how sick they are (I know you think that's the case in the US, but this is a little more extreme. For instance, sick days aren't in our contracts. When I asked about it, they said "Don't get sick."). Children spend massive amounts of time in school and around other students on low amounts of sleep and high stress levels. South Korea has something like 487 people per square kilometer. Some schools have the children cleaning them (not ours, but many public schools), and I won't really touch on hand washing here. Suffice it to say, this is a place ready made for a pandemic.

I'm kind of hoping the current situation will bring about some change in the way Korea treats illness. It's a little difficult to say, however, and let's be honest: I'm not exactly an expert social critic. Either way, I could be angry about some of the reactions to the flu. I could roll my eyes at the hysteria. But considering the expectations Korea puts on children, I'm pretty pleased with the break. If nothing else, kids might get a chance to relax a little and get healthier.