How Koreans deal with the Corona virus in daily life?

Corona virus is a worldwide issue, and Korea was one of the countries that had the early outbreak even before the pandemic announcement. Then, how did Koreans handle with the outbreak and what's now?

 

At the very beginning of the outbreak, the number was countable up to 31. The 31st patient was a 'super-spreader'. She was part of a particular religious group and attended some of the services in Daegu. Some of the church-goers had symptoms of the virus, and the Korean governmen with the Daegu City started to investigate and asked the church management department to hand over the full list of the believers. 

 

The national and city government made contacts to all people on the list individually to recommend testing for free. This is the point when the number of confirmed cases dramatically increased. 

 

However, the Korean government did not order a lockdown across the nation, but rather highly recommended social distancing 'voluntarily'. Many of the stores including restaurants, gyms, hair salons, cafes, religious groups closed for a few days until quarantine if any of the confirmed or suspected cases visited the place.  

 

Importantly, the key here is a 'tracking'. If there's any confirmed case out to the surface, investigation teams track down all traces of the case such as where the patient has visited and the patient's personal information which only releaves gender, age and a town where the patient lives so that residents nearby can be aware of any potential risk. 

 

Also, wearing a mask was critical. There have been lots of evidence and cases showing that those who contacted a confirmed case without a mask got infected when those who had a mask on didn't get infection in the same situation (place). 

 

Before the virus spread across the world, Koreans criticized the government for its inability stoping the outbreak at earlier stage. However, after they saw how other countries missed opportunities controlling the spread of the virus, they realized the Korean government did way better than other countries, which led to Ruling Party's winning of the 2020 Legislative Election. 

 

For over a week, the number of new cases are around 10, most of them are from overseas arrivals.