Seoul, South Korea

Emily and Andy Baughman

Andy and Emily Baughman moved to Seoul, South Korea from Glendale, Arizona on November 19, 2019. They are teaching English at a private, after school program. They will teach there for a year, after which they hope to teach in another country. In this interview, they discuss their unique experiences with COVID-19, online teaching and “mask culture”.

How has COVID-19 affected you day-to-day?

Emily: Our personal day to day might not have changed too much, just because of our school situation. Even when our kids weren’t coming to school, we went to school at our physical location. We started teaching online, but our schedules looked the exact same. Uh, but for other people it changed a lot around us. Kids have been stuck in their home and doing online school for months.

Andy: We probably only had six days in between the coronavirus really hitting our area and then going online. It didn't really feel that different because we just started working in our own classrooms, but on the computer. So they kept us in class, but with no kids, instead of having us go home.

Korea actually controlled the situation really well, and contained it really quickly. They got down to, like, less than 10 new cases per day. So the kids came back for about two weeks. And then there was another outbreak in Seoul near our area, so now we're back online. 

Our branch manager kind of freaked out personally and said, ‘you guys can't do anything’, so don't even go to a bar even if it's empty. [Workplaces] have personally been handling it differently. Some English schools are letting their [employees] go out and do stuff because the virus bans have been lifted across the country, but ours won't let us do anything. It still has some people in personal fear. 

When the ‘big’ outbreak happened in Korea about two months ago, it was in a city that was about two hours away from Seoul. Seoul wasn't actually super impacted. We did the government issued, like, self quarantine, but there was no lockdown here and there was no required ‘stay at home’ orders. For a while all public things like school closed. Public gatherings, museums, things like that closed. But grocery stores were open. It was up to the discretion of the business if they wanted to close. 

People didn't stockpile here. There wasn't like a toilet paper craze. We were always able to get food. We never had an issue with getting groceries or even going out to eat, even in the thick of it. Everything was still up and running. 

How are people individually dealing with the virus?

Korea is very mask oriented already. There's even things called a ‘beauty mask’, which serves no purpose, but to just have on your face. I'd say about a third of the people we'd see, especially in the subways, had a mask on. But then after the virus hit Korea, there was like 90% mask culture, 95% even.

If you didn't know the virus had hit, shopping and going to convenience stores and all that would not have felt different. The only thing that you would have noticed is maybe there were less masks on the shelves.

So there wasn't a toilet paper craze, but one could say that there was a lack of masks. So the government put a program into effect where you could get daily masks on certain days of the week. 

You go into any pharmacy and you scan your ID card. And then they can see if you've already been there and already picked up masks and they’ll give you five masks a week.

So it's like the opposite of the US, where they're encouraging people to wear them, [here] they're even like telling them WEAR them.

You can't get in a taxi without a mask. Taxi drivers won't pick you up. You can use the subway [without a mask] and people stare at you, but you can go on one. No one's gonna kick you off, but they'll look at you really hard. 

How do you think South Korea has handled the virus differently than other countries?

The response here was fast. I mean, the first coronavirus case came to Korea and the US on the same day (January 20), so it's actually pretty crazy, because you can kind of see the timeline and the way that the government here responded, and the US government waiting about two months.

It was really cool to be here and to witness [everything] because of the measures that they put in place so fast, like drive-thru coronavirus testing immediately. It was always free, so it was never a financial burden on anyone. If you did get the virus, the government would send you money. They would give you a check so that you could quarantine comfortably and stay out of public spaces. They were doing something like 10,000 tests a day. You can fact check me on that. But it was a lot. They were able to find out who has it really fast and then quarantine them so it didn't spread.

And, um, that was ultimately, I think what really, what really controlled it really fast. And so we were kind of curious to see once this other outbreak happened in Seoul. Seeing if like, okay, can they really do it again? And they did!

Once they found out that there was an outbreak in this bars and clubs district, they checked all the cell data and found roughly 10,000 people that were there, and the government sent them a text message and required them to go get a test, even if they showed no symptoms.They said if you were one of those people, you had to quarantine at your house for two weeks no matter what. That was about two weeks ago, and now we're back down to like 10 new cases a day.

This is not something that you can just overpower. You have to drown it out with testing and go way overboard and test too many people to make sure. 

I think one of the biggest differences that shocks me. How hard it is to get a test in the US I've read and heard stories of people who have all the symptoms, have a fever, want to get tested, and then still can't. Like, it's difficult to get a test and that just blows my mind.

Did you ever consider returning to the US because of the virus?

For us personally, no. A couple of reasons for that. We have amazing health care here, so we knew we were actually better off. We have a job and we're financially stable here. Whereas, if we go back, we can't go back to our old jobs. So those things made sense. 

So it just never went through our minds to leave this and go back to the US which was kind of floundering around with these cases and all that.

We are in one of the most stable countries in the world, and in one of the most stable businesses, because parents always want their kids to learn. Parents are gonna pay and when that company is paid, they need teachers.