The EconomistMarch 28th 2020 Asia 352 torted videos, footage from spy-cams and
deepfake pornography.
The case has caused particular outrage
owing to the youth of many of the victims.
Subscribers knew this only too well: de-
scriptions of some channels featured per-
sonal details of the girls, including where
they went to school. Public anger has
eclipsed even the reaction to the “Burning
Sun” scandal, which rocked the glamorous
k-pop scene last year when it emerged that
several stars had been complicit in produc-
ing abusive content and sharing it in on-
line chatrooms.
The authorities are keen to be seen to be
cracking down hard. So far they have de-
tained 19 men, including Mr Cho. Dozens
more are under investigation. Even South
Korea’s president, despite being busy with
covid-19, has become involved to reassure
people that justice will prevail. Moon
Jae-in vowed to take a stern approach to
digital sexual-abuse crimes, calling the of-
fenders “cruel” and public fury “justified”.
But it remains to be seen whether all the
public hand-wringing will result in justice
for the victims, many of them vulnerable
girls with troubled family histories or fi-nancial difficulties. Activists have long
complained of South Korea’s sketchy re-
cord on prosecuting sexual abuse and the
misogyny entrenched in the law, which
still regards being drunk as a valid defence
for those accused of rape. Anger ran high
last week when prosecutors recommended
a sentence of only three and a half years for
a chat-room host in a similar case. And
even with the best of intentions, attempt-
ing to stamp out the distribution of abusive
material online can be a wild-goose chase,
as perpetrators shift from one anonymous
platform to the next. 7Banyan An island at the ready
S
pare a momentand admire Taiwan.
Its handling of the new coronavirus
pandemic has so far saved many, many
lives. The figures tell the story. A country
of 24m, it has far fewer infections than
its neighbours: just 235 as of March 25th,
with only two deaths.
Taiwanese officials seem to know
what they are doing. The vice-president,
Chen Chien-jen, is a noted epidemiolo-
gist and former health minister. It helps
that the country has had a system in
place to handle such crises, since the
sarsepidemic of 2003, which led to 73
deaths. Back then, it was not clear who
was in charge. So in 2004 the govern-
ment set up the Central Epidemic Com-
mand Centre (cecc). Usually dormant, in
an emergency its mandate is to work
across government departments and
commandeer the resources it needs. On
January 20th President Tsai Ing-wen
triggered the ceccand put the minister
of health, Chen Shih-chung, in charge.
Its response was swift, and ranged
from screening inbound air passengers
to energetic testing and rationing face
masks. A curious legacy of dictatorship
under the Kuomintang, or Nationalist
Party, organised along Leninist lines, is
Taiwan’s system of neighbourhood
wardens. These have helped enforce
quarantines and deliver food to those
who cannot go out to get it.
If Taiwan shines at anything, it is it.
National databases and big data have
been put to use identifying those most at
risk of infection. If that sounds like Big
Brother, freedom-loving Taiwanese have
widely accepted it for the common good.
Meanwhile, the government is open and
upfront about the progress of the out-
break. The media take the dissemination
of information seriously. And a stiff
fake-news law has helped shut downdisinformation campaigns on social me-
dia originating from China, which are
intended to sow mistrust of the govern-
ment’s handling of the pandemic. If ordin-
ary Taiwanese are broadly reassured, so is
the economy. Business confidence has
held up remarkably well. This is in striking
contrast to the panic and uncertainty in
Europe and America.
Strong economic and personal connec-
tions with China might be expected to
complicate Taiwan’s response to covid-19.
After all, even America got it in the neck
when it banned flights from China. Yet Ms
Tsai and her administration have been in
the doghouse with the Chinese authorities
for years. China, which claims the island
as its own, dislikes her Democratic Pro-
gressive Party for its espousal of formal
independence from China. Yet the chill
made for crisper decision-making once
the threat became clear. And those strong
connections alerted the Taiwanese au-
thorities to a worrying outbreak in Wuhan
before the Chinese government had come
clean about it. China’s initial cover-up
eroded people’s trust in its response. Incontrast, vigorous and timely action in
Taiwan set a reassuring tone. As early as
late December Taiwanese health officials
were boarding flights from Wuhan to
check passengers for symptoms.
Not all is rosy. It is harder to track
infections among some 50,000 illicit
migrants from South-East Asia, many of
them care-workers. Taiwanese returning
from other parts of the world risk setting
off a new wave of infections. A Taiwanese
press used to Chinese hostility has
adopted a war footing against the
coronavirus, including vigorous support
for the government; if officials do fall
short, or invade citizens’ privacy, it is not
clear the press would call them out.
For all that, Taiwan’s performance is
remarkable. Even more remarkable is
that the country is not a member of the
World Health Organisation. The simple
reason is that a bullying China refuses it
entry. It may not even attend the World
Health Assembly, the who’s decision-
making forum, as an observer. When
Taiwan wrote to the whoin late Decem-
ber asking whether there was human-to-
human transmission in the virus out-
break in Wuhan, the who, the body now
admits, did not reply.
Taiwan’s fight against covid-19 has
shown that it can cope outside the who,
even if there is a cost. But its exclusion
causes wider damage. Taiwan’s early
understanding of the threat of the
coronavirus could have given others
advance warning. Taiwan’s inability to
disseminate its findings cost lives.
The whohas praised China for “per-
haps the most ambitious, agile and ag-
gressive disease containment effort in
history”, which is true. But the who
could spare a word of praise for Taiwan,
too. Better yet, it should insist that China
end its unconscionable boycott.Taiwan’s success against covid-19 shows the craziness of its exclusion from the WHO