More than a month has passed since the Yoon Suk-yeol administration launched the “Covid-19 Special Response Team” under the slogan of “scientific quarantine.”
However, the team has neither appointed members nor held a single meeting.
Rep. Kim Won-i of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) remarked so at the National Assembly while releasing data submitted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
On Aug. 3, the Yoon administration appointed Professor Jung Ki-suck of Hallym University head of the Covid-19 Special Response Team. The government explained that the team’s purpose was strengthening the role of private experts within the Central Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters to reflect faithfully data-based expert opinions on quarantine policies. Professor Jung also heads the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Disease Crisis Response.
However, a month after the government named Professor Jung as the head of the team, he has not selected other team members or held a meeting.
According to Rep. Kim, Jung is the only Covid-19 Special Response Team member. Jung has not held a single meeting. All he did was hold new briefings on 11 occasions.
“There had already been the National Advisory Committee on Response to Infectious Diseases, an independent advisory body of 21 private experts. So, the launch of a new response team was nothing but ‘a roof over a roof,’” he said.
Kim criticized the special response team was a makeshift move to pretend the government was doing something. “Whoever does the briefing, it was the government’s duty, which can never be a special response or an accomplishment,” he said.
Although the Yoon administration stresses the role of private experts, there are no differences between the advisory committees of the Moon Jae-in administration and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration in that both can do little more than give advice without any rights to make decisions, Kim said.
“The Yoon administration’s quarantine policy is the “plagiaristic quarantine” of the Moon administration,” the opposition lawmaker said. “The advisory body under the Moon administration was more reasonable in decision-making because the prime minister and a private expert co-chaired the committee.”