Grace Healy - South Korea

A shot of the queues for masks

Grace’s resemblance to her younger sister Clare is uncanny. When describing her older sibling currently living in South Korea, Clare had joked Kate and Rooney Mara were the most apt equivalent for the pair. Now, it seems more like the two were one and the same, just at different points in time. As South Korea was one of the first countries to deal with the coronavirus, Grace had been comforting Clare that the panic she was experiencing in their native Ireland wouldn’t last long.

The differences Grace describes to me seem a world apart, however. During our call, she warns that her phone might go off with an alert – a regular occurrence since the outbreak had started. Initially sounding seven or eight times a day, five loud beeps indicate a new positive diagnosis (briefly breaking her formality, Grace impersonates the beeps for me).

The messages detail the areas of possible infection in the days prior; the shops the person had visited, and the transport links used. Admitting that it had initially felt very Orwellian, the texts were now a comfort and provide a sense of control.

Looking back, she explains that it had been bizarre at the start – classes full of children wearing masks and obsessively washing hands. Describing it as a caricature, she is equally unsure of how seriously to take it:

“It seems silly but…Maybe not silly. I don’t know, I don’t know. They’re opening the school back on Monday, and I still don’t know what to think – if its right or wrong. I was getting much more relaxed until today. A lot of the mothers are getting upset saying they don’t want to send their kids back to school. A 17-year-old boy passed away from it, so…” With this, she casts her eyes down at the table, and some of the earlier anxiety that is now plaguing her sister seems to return.

This is much further on – four weeks into lockdown. The first week, no one had really gone outside. Social distancing was at its most present, when they were avoiding each other in queues (particularly, Grace felt, if you weren’t a local). Gloves and a mask were mandated for leaving the house, and cashiers not wearing equipment were a point of anxiety for her. The second and third week saw people becoming more and more lax, before finally this week, the fourth week, a massive shift in mood: “Yesterday was Paddy’s Day and people went out to the pub, to the Irish bar.” she laughs.

Qualifying there is still a sense of seriousness (“You can only use plastic cups and paper utensils – everyone sits a table space away from each other voluntarily. I’ve heard Ireland are putting reserved signs on the tables? No, In Korea, they’re doing it voluntarily.”), there was an underlying sense of relief that quarantine measures had been implemented. Sure that she would have become ill had a shutdown not been put into place, it was her own tiredness and lack of immunity that played on her mind.

“I can’t express enough how Korean work culture is very demanding. I feel like the last year I’ve worked so much. If you’re able to take a rest and take care of yourself, you should – because that’ll build up your immunity and be stronger. That sounds really cheesy, but it’s how I’m thinking about it.”

“It’s a chance to do things I’ve always wanted to do – like go for a stroll. I’d never seen Korea on a weekday afternoon. I hadn’t had time to do anything really relaxing, and it was great to do that. It’s not what I want to say, because it’s not the right thing to say, but it’s true.”

The view from Grace’s apartment

At home, cooking food, sleeping and working on her laptop had become her new norm. Conducting classes online had taken the place of her classroom – an opportunity that had been equally buttressed by the shutdown. With faculties not only locked down in South Korea, but in China, there was no lack of pupils looking for English teachers. Excited to give a unique glimpse into the country where it all began, she tells me this is something that really had been playing on her mind.

There are two types of students, she says. Half are afraid. Afraid for themselves, afraid for their relatives, afraid not enough was being done and the end was nigh. The other half are confident in China as the sole safeguard in the pandemic. These students feel the rest of the world were incompetent in their measures and wouldn’t be able to deal with the chaos. One student had told her it was Fake News. Another had a friend in Wuhan: “He hasn’t heard from him since it started, and he thinks they might be…” she trails off. Regardless of their opinions, most were at home, and had been for a long time. “Many months”, Graces nods “A lot of them seem to be getting cabin fever.”

“People here are going out, to go for walks or to the shops.” But not so in China. Without this option, the psychological toll seemed greater. This had been her advice to Clare – to avoid large social gatherings, stay away from the pub, and to be smart – but to stay sane. Some sense of normality would return, and it wasn’t a prison sentence. With that, one key difference stood out – the public reaction:

“I really didn’t like seeing people queuing up in trolleys full of food. There was none of that here.” Shaking her head in disbelief, she continues, “I didn’t see a single thing out of stock except for masks. They were gone quite quickly. There was never a problem with food. There were never any queues, never any food shortages. They didn’t panic-buy at all. It really annoyed me when I saw that.”

Korean culture, perhaps, lay at the heart of this. Past experience too (“This has happened before I think, with the MERS outbreak.”) played its part. This sense of calm and trust in the government and in each other had resulted in things dying down, in taking the necessary steps. Now, she says, they’re watching the rest of the world with equal measures concern and bafflement.

“In Korean media, the way they’re reporting it is really funny. Its switched. At the beginning I was getting so many calls - so afraid for me. Now the Korean news is Australians having punch-ups in supermarkets, and a live Skype call with a Korean man in Italy. It’s the complete opposite of what we’re doing now. People were so worried for me, and now I’m worried for people in Ireland. But, if people are sensible, it will be fine.”

Wrapping up the interview, we begin to chat and I tell her about some of the other countries we’ve been calling – Hong Kong, Vietnam, the U.S.… She asks how I’ve been finding the pandemic, and I answer honestly: at times, anxiety-provoking, but talking to those ahead of our own quarantine was a way to work through and address my own concerns. She nods sympathetically and tells me her own initial panic attacks were really hard: “I would be in work, eating lunch, and I would see an article and I wouldn’t be able to swallow. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by it if you can help it.”

This constant anxiety of a future unknown had obviously been a concern for Grace, and still vaguely is when we’re talking. Others had taken her place as the pressing issue, but she seems content in offering help to those around her “I don’t want to sound like I’m talking down to [Clare]. You can’t help but worry. I’ve been trying to say to her, implement the same measures we do.” When she tells me she wishes she had taken a video of herself a month ago to remember what it was like, it seems she did the next best thing. Not only that, but she has her own insights to offer - a month’s advance on the measures going on at home, reassuring stories of rest and healing, and a reminder that life would carry on regardless.

“Any Song by Zico” - Grace’s Song of the Moment