In the global response to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, South Korea has often been hailed as one of the successful cases in containing the disease. Commentators within and outside the country have pointed to preemptive testing, aggressive contact tracing, and the well-organized health care system to treat the identified patients as effective means to “flatten the curve” (You Citation2020). By June2020, the South Korean government was confident enough to promote its practices (the so-called “3 T model” of test-trace-treat) as a“global standard” (Korea Times Citation2020). Based on the model, the country has maintained arelatively low level of new cases, albeit with intermittent spikes.
