hankyoreh

From left to right are former US President Donald Trump, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.” – former US President Donald Trump, speaking of COVID-19

“We will look into toughening our border control measures as a form of quarantine.” – former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

“Infectious disease control is not merely a matter of public health and hygiene; it’s an all-encompassing issue and a total war.” – Chinese President Xi Jinping

These remarks were made by the leaders of the US, Japan, and China in February and March 2020, as the COVID-19 virus was rapidly spreading around the world.

Leaders’ remarks generally have a clear objective and are only released to the public after being carefully polished. These brief remarks encapsulate how seriously these leaders regarded the pandemic and how they dealt with that situation.

On March 4, the Hankyoreh Institute of Language held an academic seminar on the topic of public discourse on COVID-19 in South Korea, China, Japan, and the US. The seminar commemorated the first anniversary of the pandemic, on March 11.

In the seminar, four scholars analyzed the language used publicly by leaders, governments and the press. The participating scholars are Lim Gyeong-hwa, a professor at Chung-Ang University with the HK borderlands project; Kim Ye-gyeong, a researcher at the National Assembly Research Service; Lee Chang-bong, a professor of English language and literature at the Catholic University of Korea; and Shin Jin-won, a lecturer at the Office of General Education at Pusan National University.

Lim Gyeong-hwa, who presented on Japan, illustrated how Japan’s “linguistic nationalism” has become even more overt since the outbreak of COVID-19. In a press conference, Abe noted that the world had recognized Japan’s avoidance of the “three Cs” — namely, closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. Abe emphasized that Japan’s disease control campaign had been exported around the world.

After facing sharp criticism for his shoddy response to COVID-19, Abe focused on a modest success in an attempt to appease the public. According to Lim, Abe’s remarks were grounded in Japan’s “dangerous pride” in their national language.

“A Japanese television program said that the COVID-19 cluster in Itaewon [a neighborhood in Seoul] was caused by Koreans’ tendency to release a large number of respiratory droplets when they speak and their failure to avoid the ‘three Cs.’ These remarks are too serious to be disregarded. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered Japanese language nationalism by adding the value of cleanliness to that of excellence, which means that infectious disease control could be used as the grounds for suppressing linguistic diversity and discriminating against other languages inside Japan.”

Lim also focused on the disease control measures that Abe mentioned, using the word “mizugiwa,” meaning “the water’s edge.” The term is used in a military context when troops in an amphibious assault are wiped out before they can land. In the COVID-19 context, Abe was talking about toughening quarantine controls at airports and seaports to prevent the coronavirus from “landing” in the country.

This approach, Lim said, derives from “the assumption of national superiority and preeminence and the belief that the country can be kept clean simply by tightening the national borders.” That ultimately resulted in the tragedy of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Lim argued.

Kim Ye-gyeong examined Chinese press reports and statements by Xi Jinping. After analyzing articles in various newspapers and on China’s state-run China Internet Information Center between 2020 and Feb. 14, 2021, she concluded that press reports in this period focused on demonstrating the inerrancy of Xi and the Chinese Communist Party.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, “there were far more infections and fatalities than in the SARS outbreak in 2002, causing public dissatisfaction and criticism of the government and the Chinese Communist Party to reach higher levels than ever before.”

China’s state-run media announced where Xi had gone and what instructions he’d given each day in a diary format. That appeared to be an attempt to persuade the public that Xi was keeping the COVID-19 crisis under control by giving the right orders at the right time.

Kim also focused on the fact that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party had used the press as “faithful conveyors” of a message to stir up patriotism among the Chinese people and duck the blame for COVID-19 pouring in from around the world.

Lee Chang-bong reviewed the US’s failure at fighting COVID-19 from the perspective of a linguist. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Trump frequently used martial metaphors, even describing himself as a “wartime president.” But at the same time, he also downplayed the severity of the outbreak by resorting to irresponsible phrases about things being “fine” and about the pandemic “fading away.”

Lee also remarked that it was inappropriate for Trump to provoke discriminatory attitudes toward Asians through his use of the term “China virus” and to express apathy about the droves of people dying from the virus. “They are dying, that’s true. […] It is what it is,” Trump said.

Shin Jin-won, who presented on South Korea, examined how assessments of China in the South Korean press have changed since the COVID-19 outbreak. In her review of the titles of all editorials that ran in 2020 in four national daily newspapers (the Chosun Ilbo and the Joongang Ilbo representing conservatives and the Kyunghyang Shinmun and the Hankyoreh representing progressives), she found that the conservative papers reinforced a negative stance toward China while the progressive newspapers shifted from a positive stance to a negative one.

Concerns about xenophobia toward Chinese people didn’t become a reality in the editorials of South Korean newspapers. Shin suggested that that was because the newspapers were worried that xenophobia against Chinese in South Korea might provide a justification for the xenophobia against Asians that was already occurring in the US and other countries.

By Choi Yoon-ah, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]