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The Blue House

After some newspapers covering the Blue House’s suspension of its visa-free entry for Japanese travelers reported that Japan was the sole target of its tough measures, the Blue House countered that those newspapers were misrepresenting the facts.

“We have responded to Japan’s excessive and unreasonable measures by taking reciprocal measures in a restrained manner, according to our three principles for dealing with the novel coronavirus outbreak: namely, transparency, openness, and the democratic process,” the Blue House said.

In a statement to the press on Mar. 8, Blue House spokesperson Kang Min-seok rebutted the argument that the South Korean government is defending China and only attacking Japan, offering three grounds in support of his position. Some newspapers had advanced that argument after the South Korean government took reciprocal action following Japan’s removal of South Korea from its visa-free entry program.

Kang began by explaining that “a considerable number of the countries that are tightening or restricting entry from South Korea or banning it altogether are tourist destinations such as the Maldives that don’t have strong quarantine capabilities.” According to Kang, it’s not critical for South Korea to toughen restrictions on such countries, since they don’t pose as high an infection risk as Japan, with its large number of confirmed cases.

Kang went on to explain the necessity of suspending visa-free entry from Japan: “The amount of testing that’s being done inside Japan is so low that it’s not even comparable with South Korea, resulting in uncertainty about the extent of the coronavirus outbreak there. As of Mar. 7, South Korea had carried out 188,518 tests altogether, whereas Japan had only carried out 8,029.”

Kang added that Japan had gone too far with its five measures and hadn’t even bothered to discuss them in advance with South Korea. He went on to draw attention to the fact that the Japanese press has concluded that Tokyo’s measures seek to “exploit South Korea for the political objective of avoiding [the blame for] its own failure to contain the outbreak.” Under these circumstances, Kang said, taking reciprocal measures to respond to the considerable suffering faced by 17,000 Korean students in Japan, as well as tourists and employees headed there, is something that a sovereign state is entitled to do.

Finally, the Blue House said that the special entry procedures that would be required for people arriving from Japan were already required for visitors from China. “Since we’re imposing the same special entry procedures on both Japan and China, it doesn’t make sense to accuse us of protecting China and only being tough on Japan,” Kang pointed out.

“Claiming that we’re going easy on China and only playing hardball with Japan is not only inaccurate, but it’s also unhelpful for overcoming this crisis situation. This is a time when we should be joining forces to beat this infection,” Kang said.

By Lee Wan, staff reporter

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