Here is some apparent blowback on the WHO which could effect South Korea:
A group of senior U.S Congress members has asked Korea, among 55 countries, to support Taiwan joining the World Health Organization (WHO) despite China’s opposition.
Korea Times
Analysts said Friday this may test Korea again in its attempts to strike a balance between the U.S. and China, following the heightened Washington-Beijing standoff over the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can read more at the link, but I would be surprised if the Moon administration supports this. I would think they would try to filibuster the idea and wait for it to go away without having to make a decision on it.
Here is a long, but interesting read from Australia’s Daily Telegraph about a leaked document supposedly prepared by western governments about the possibility of the coronavirus being unintentionally released from the Wuhan lab:
China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.
The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.
It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.
Daily Telegraph
You can read more at the link, but even though there is no direct evidence yet that it was unintentionally released from the lab, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way laid out in the article. Unfortunately it appears that circumstantial evidence is only relevant depending on ones politics.
This seems to be a growing belief that this virus was accidentally spilled from the lab in Wuhan:
There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.
This may be the “costliest government cover-up of all time,” one of the sources said.
The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.
The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized — as is often the case with intelligence — that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.
Fox News
You can read more at the link.
This unhappiness is because of the lax standards the Korean government has with Chinese entering South Korea compared to Chinese regional governments putting Koreans going to China in mandatory 14-day quarantines:
Public chagrin is growing over some Chinese provincial authorities’ forcible anti-coronavirus quarantine measures against South Koreans, fueling criticism of Seoul’s cautious immigration controls and strengthening calls for broader entry bans on Chinese visitors.
Despite Seoul’s entry ban limited only to China’s central Hubei Province at the center of the new coronavirus outbreaks, Weihai in the eastern Shandong Province and other regions have enforced unannounced quarantine steps against visitors from South Korea.
The measures came after Seoul embraced Beijing’s calls for a “scientific” decision in line with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommendations against unnecessary travel restrictions and sent protective masks, goggles and other relief items to China in a show of unity in the fight against the virus outbreaks.
The containment move raised questions over Seoul’s hitherto cautious approach in dealing with Chinese travelers in the midst of a recent spike in the number of COVID-19 infections in South Korea, which has risen to 1,146.
“China has been consistent in its claim that travel restrictions should be made based on scientific grounds and WHO recommendations, while decrying strict entry restrictions by the United States and other countries,” Park Won-gon, professor of international politics at Handong Global University, said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but the only thing I am surprised about is that people are surprised by the Chinese government’s duplicity on this issue.
