Covid-19: South Korea pays its citizens to report offenders

 

Covid-19 requires, all means are good, for the South Korean executive, to stem the spread of the virus. This includes the recourse to the vigilance of citizens, encouraged to denounce to the authorities, supporting photos, their less assiduous compatriots in compliance with health rules, such as wearing a mask or respecting a fortnight, relates International mail from local newspapers.

One of them, Chosun Ilbo, explains that the Ministry of Interior and Security “promises vouchers worth 100,000 won to the hundred people most active in this field.” The reward – which is equivalent to about 75 euros – and the health context would have thus led to an increase in reports of “coparazzi”, a term which contracts two others: “coronavirus” and “paparazzi”. “With more than a thousand daily cases of contamination, the activities of” coparazzi “are intensifying”, continues the same media.

Denials on the rise in recent months

RFI, for its part, explains that the South Koreans can denounce to the authorities, for 20 years, some 300 different offenses. In 2019, 1.8 million of these reports were completed. As part of the fight against Covid-19, the local executive has therefore decided to set up a platform specially dedicated to this type of denunciation. The radio also mentions that between August and the end of December, the number of denunciations jumped from the simple to the double: from 8,071 to nearly 16,000.

South Korea, which has more than 51 million inhabitants, has recorded, since the start of the epidemic, nearly 66,000 cases of Covid-19, for just over 1,000 deaths. Since the end of November, however, it has been facing a third wave of contaminations.

You may also like