has set an example in tackling the

. How did they do it and what was behind some of the steps the country took. Talking to TOI’s Indrani Bagchi, South Korea’s ambassador Shin Bong-Kil spelt out the steps taken by his country and how democracies have to do things differently. Excerpts:

Korea tackled the coronavirus issue very aggressively, resulting in fewer deaths. Tell us what was the thinking behind these moves.We thought that identifying and isolating the contagion in the early stages was the easiest way to fight coronavirus. We were successful. Also, we could treat patients well, which lowered the death rate. We developed the drive through test kit in early stages. Our bio companies worked at top speed to make both reagent and equipment. We could identify the geographical area of the infection and group early. It is an opaque religious group (Shincheonji) in the Daegu area, which has a church in Wuhan. They were heavily contaminated. We got a list of the group members and we made a comprehensive test of them. 60% of all Korea’s infected individuals cases were from this group. This province had almost 90% of all of Korea’s contamination.What is Korea doing to prevent the outflow of Covid-19?The Korean government is strictly controlling outbound travellers who could be described as “close contact”, i.e. one who has been within 2 meters of an infected person. These people are prohibited from leaving Korea. Until March 12, we had identified 22,000 of such “contacts”. They are not infected but they could be vectors. Our main airport is Incheon International Airport. We made it into a Covid-19-free zone. We have made mandatory, multi-step fever checks on all outbound passengers. We are screening strictly — three times in airport — departure hall, security checkpoint and boarding gate.What innovative steps did you take to fight this virus?Our drive-through test centre has been popular and is very effective. Now we have developed a walk-through test centre. You get the results by text message on your phone. Korea is a heavily wired country, so this is possible. We have six firms already manufacturing testing kits. If India has an interest, we can connect them. We have developed an app for fighting the virus. When you move, the GPS on your phone detects where you are and where you have travelled. That helps us quarantine areas where infected persons have visited. The app also helps us monitor the ‘self-quarantined’. If you break quarantine, you are detected. Yes, there are privacy issues, but we feel safety and health are more important. We are now producing a health certificate for travellers. Korea is the first to make this health certificate. Now India is asking for a similar certificate. We proposed that our authorised medical institutions produce this health certificate. Indians have called it a “ very good idea”.China says they have a model to deal with pandemics like coronavirus. Do you think democracies have a different model?The principles that governed our response are important — openness and transparency. At every stage, we were open to what was going on, numbers etc. That way we earned the trust of the people. They believed the government and are more open about obeying government instructions. In a democracy, we believe, this is most important. If you are an authoritarian government, you can control this information. But people don’t believe it. Like in North Korea — they say there is no coronavirus infection. But they have shut down the capital Pyongyang, even shut down embassies. India, the world’s largest democracy, should be open and transparent so that a nation of 1.3 billion could believe in the government to follow decisions.