hankyoreh

The logistics center of e-platform Coupang in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, is closed after a COVD-19 infection cluster was uncovered there. (Yonhap News)

Many of South Korea’s students — those in the second year of high school, the third year of middle school, the first and second grades of elementary school, and kindergarten — began on-campus classes on May 27. On that same day, the country reported 40 new cases of COVID-19, the biggest jump in 49 days. The number of cases linked to the Bucheon logistics center of e-commerce platform Coupang rose to 36 on Wednesday. As first graders cheerfully attend their first classes in the classroom, there are serious concerns that classes will have to be suspended yet again.

As of 10 am on Wednesday, 561 schools in cities where community-based infections are taking place (not only Bucheon, where the Coupang logistics center is based, but also Seoul and Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province) postponed the classes scheduled for that day. After five delays, on-campus classes began for the third year of high school on May 20, but more student infections were reported around that time as coin-operated karaoke rooms, popular among teenagers, emerged as a new epicenter for transmission. An instructor and kindergarten student were also infected at an art academy in Seoul’s Gangseo District. All that cast a worrying shadow on plans to expand on-campus classes.

It’s under such circumstances that we learn that the Coupang’s Bucheon logistics center was blatantly violating disease control rules at the workplace. According to an article in the Hankyoreh’s May 28 edition, Coupang management learned that employees had been infected on the morning of May 24 but had employees in the afternoon shift come in to work anyway, without informing them about the outbreak. Even after the company belatedly informed its employees, it didn’t give them detailed criteria for determining who should self-quarantine.

First graders at an elementary school in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, sit at individual desks protected by plastic barriers. (Kim Myoung-jin, staff photographer)

In the end, one of the employees on the afternoon shift on May 24 tested positive for COVID-19 the following day. The number of people infected at the logistics center is likely to increase because there are 1,300 people working there and because their work doesn’t allow them to maintain a safe distance. On May 27, a COVID-19 case turned up at another logistics center — this one in Seoul’s Songpa District, operated by Market Curly, an online grocery shopping platform — raising fears that the logistics center may be the site of a major outbreak. It’s incredibly irresponsible for a company with thousands of employees to be so lackadaisical about disease control rules when students around the country are anxiously heeding those self-same rules, hoping it will be safe enough to return to the classroom. It’s no exaggeration to say that the company failed to take action on the outbreak.

The rest of the grades in elementary, middle, and high school are scheduled to return to the classroom on June 3 and June 8. We hope that the Ministry of Education and the school leadership will double-check their disease control plans to ensure that it’s safe for students to attend school. It goes without saying that on-campus classes should be immediately suspended if cases are reported in the local community. By the same token, the community needs to meticulously abide by the disease control rules to keep students’ safe. Companies with a lot of employees working in the same place, such as Coupang with its logistics centers, need to ponder their duties as members of Korean society.

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