The Korea Times reported that the country’s Ministry of Justice made the deportation decision on Thursday, and that additional ejections of foreign nationals would continue so long as those individuals fail to adhere to the COVID-19-linked restrictions.
“No exception will be made,” reads a ministry statement viewed by the Times.
Local government officials from South Korea’s North Jeolla Province reported that the Vietnamese students broke with lockdown measures last Friday after all three decided to leave their cellphones at their Gunsan home. The students spent roughly five hours at a nearby park.
Among several options presently being utilized in South Korea to contain the spread of COVID-19, Korean officials have opted to use cellphone location tracking in order to better inform residents of individuals who have contracted the respiratory disease. The system also informs the community of places an ill person has traveled.
Although it’s unclear if the students were positive for the deadly disease, the Times reported that officials ultimately found out about the ruling-breaking trio “during a phone conversation with the quarantine authorities.”
Thus far, the South Korean government has deported two individuals over their failure to adhere to self-quarantine orders. The first case involved a Taiwanese woman who refused to pay the fee associated with the quarantine facility to which she was assigned after arriving in the country. The second deportee was an Indonesian man who gave authorities a false address and was found to have left the quarantine venue he was placed in.
Since April 1, all new arrivals at South Korean airports and other ports of entry have been ordered to undergo a two-week quarantine before proceeding to their final destination in the country.
Newly imposed restrictions recently saw the government suspend its visa waiver program so that all travelers can be more thoroughly vetted. The new stipulation dictates that starting April 13, travelers from certain countries must submit their medical records when they apply for a visa.
In an effort to further strengthen its preventive measures, the South Korean government is also considering the possibility of introducing GPS-enabled bracelets to better track the movements of individuals ordered to self-quarantine.
A highly controversial matter, many critics have argued against the use of such technology over privacy concerns. Choi Young Ae, the chief of Korea’s Human Rights Commission, warned Thursday that the use of such intrusive measures would “infringe on the basic rights of each individual.”
“The government needs to take this into consideration before making any decision,” she told the Times. “It took a long time for us to achieve what we have now in terms of human rights. If we let things go back to where they were before just because it's a time of crisis, it will be much harder and take much longer to get our achievements back."
The latest figures released by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a total of 10,423 confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Korea, of which 861 were deemed “imported cases.” A total of 348 cases were first detected at airport checkpoints, whereas 513 were reported by community monitors. A total of 39 novel coronavirus cases were detected Thursday.