S. Korean nationals among Time Magazine's list of most influential for 2020

[연초록]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyjxewkXyUY 

South Korea’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has become a global example. Dr. Jung Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), has led the nation’s antivirus efforts to success by candidly interacting with the public, based on the principles of openness, transparency and democracy.

When the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Korea, Commissioner Jung stood before the people. Since then, she has personally held daily briefings to release transparent updates on the number of confirmed cases; the origins of their infections; and the latest figures on tests, quarantine and treatment. The public, in return, has exhibited the power of solidarity and cooperation by voluntarily following individual hygiene rules such as wearing face masks, washing hands frequently and observing social distancing.

As the first female chief of KDCA and also a preventive-­medicine specialist, Commissioner Jung has enhanced the organization’s preparedness. Six months before the COVID-19 outbreak, she helped create a manual on response procedures for unidentified mass infections, and conducted drills on a sophisticated emergency-­response algorithm.

Bernard Rieux in Albert Camus’ The Plague says, “The only way to fight the plague is with decency.” I believe Commissioner Jung’s decency and dedication are indeed a story worth ­telling—one that will serve as an inspiration for the many Commissioner Jungs around the world desperately fighting COVID-19, and for humanity as we advance toward the post-COVID-19 era.

What Might the Post-Pandemic World Look Like?

There is a word in Korean, ahjussi, which refers to an average older man. In some family photographs of a certain era, you can see that the Korean father—ahjussi—has parked one foot on a curb, a hand on his hip, and taken his gaze insouciantly off into the distance: staunch, detached and, at the same time, somehow heroic. Bong Joon Ho and I have always found what we call the “ahjussi pose” unbelievably funny, the way this attitude of the casual born out of undeniable shyness renders every participant looking like nothing more than the model for a vintage knitting pattern. Over the past decade, including—unforgettably—on the great steps of the Grand Palais at Cannes, we have recorded countless ahjussi poses. On newsstands in January, Director Bong struck a magnificent specimen of the form on the cover of Vanity Fair, wedged against a prop chair, looking otherwise engaged.

This is the filmmaker who, this year, has risen into the 2020 vision of the entire cine­passionate planet like a new sun. Whip-smart, highly skilled, supremely cine­literate, exuberant, irreverent, self-determining, deeply romantic, with a voracious delight in the absurd, highly principled, precision-tuned, compassionate to the last: his films have always been all this. It just seems to be time for the world to catch up.

He is the ultimate sophisticate cinematic fanboy whilst harboring not a drop of either snobbery or cynicism: he is good for cinema from start to finish. And the person? Sweet-hearted, loyal, amused, cozy, playful, sincere, especially hilarious when in his cups, fiercely familial, gloriously silly, unfailingly kind. Diamond.