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On January 20, a flight from the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan landed at Incheon International Airport in Seoul.
One passenger on board had symptoms of fever.
A test showed: Corona, it was the first case in South Korea.
One day earlier, on January 19, 2020, a Chinese woman landed at Munich Airport.
She had been visited in Shanghai by her parents in Wuhan the previous day.
The Chinese woman was Germany's patient zero - in the following days she took part in a workshop at the Bavarian auto supplier Webasto and infected several colleagues.
The "novel corona virus" was still considered a Far Eastern problem by people in Germany for weeks.
In this country, nobody simply wanted to see how small the world is now.
In truth, the pandemic from China spread to East Asia and Europe relatively simultaneously.
The only answer to the Corona crisis was not at all simultaneous: Asia and Europe were two planets here.
The comparison of South Korea and Germany shows this particularly blatantly.
Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) recently announced that there should be free corona rapid tests for every German from March 1.
But this date cannot be kept after all - the Chancellor canceled the start date.
Too many questions about implementation are apparently too unclear.
"I find it very frustrating to see what has been going on in Germany for a year," says Christian Taaks, who has lived in Seoul for three years and heads the office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is close to the FDP.
“Here in South Korea you were always very quick and reacted immediately to new developments, as well as to every single case of infection.
The communication about the necessary measures was always crystal clear. "
Rapid tests as early as early 2020
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In concrete terms, very quickly means: The first positive Corona case was reported in Germany on January 27, 2020.
It was one of the Webasto employees who had been unsuspectingly infected by the Chinese colleague.
On the same day, the first meeting between government officials and private biotech companies took place in a room in the Seoul train station.
Four days later, a first company presented the prototype for a corona rapid test.
On February 4th, the test by the South Korean company Kogene Biotech received its first emergency approval.
At the end of February, numerous other companies had already approved their own kits.
On February 28, South Korea passed 15,000 tests a day.
The country set up more than 600 test stations across the country in just a few days.
Many of them were drive-through tents, where drivers could do a test within ten minutes, the result of which they received on their smartphone after three days at the latest.
Everyone was allowed to be tested, with or without symptoms.
Initially, people without symptoms had to pay, later the tests were done free of charge for everyone.
On March 3, 851 new infections were reported.
A higher number was not reached again until December during the third wave.
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On March 16, 250,000 people had already been tested in South Korea, all cases followed up and the spread of the epidemic stopped.
Germany, on the other hand, had lost control - and went into the first lockdown on March 22nd.
South Korea was better prepared
Now South Korea had a big advantage.
Because the government's slow response to the MERS epidemic in 2015 came under severe criticism, a great deal of preparations had been made for a new epidemic since then.
Germany, on the other hand, was hit completely unprepared.
The Federal Republic of Germany also quickly built up test capacities and tested more than many other countries in the first wave.
But only people with symptoms are entitled to tests and the results can often take a long time to be reported.
Fatal in a disease that is often asymptomatic.
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Germany is not aiming for a strategy like the one in South Korea.
In a paper dated April 17, 2020, the Ministry of Health lists the problems it sees: Rapid PCR tests can "not be carried out in large quantities".
Only "very few tests at the same time" are possible.
In addition, the corona viruses are pathogens of a very high risk class.
South Korea had shown the opposite for two months: PCR tests were carried out there in large quantities, at the same time and, thanks to the drive-through concept, also very safely for the medical staff.
“National vaccination strategy” in Germany only in October
The Ministry of Health writes in the paper that antigen tests are necessary to quickly test many people and to better protect risk groups, for example when visiting old people's homes.
What followed: federal skirmishes, organizational errors and the summer vacation, which left many things paralyzed.
It was not until October, when a second wave could no longer be prevented, that a “national vaccination strategy” was decided which, among other things, was supposed to systematically protect old people's homes with antigen tests.
It took until well into January for it to be implemented.
In the second wave, a very large part of the corona victims died in old people's homes.
Also because the tests came too late.
Opposition scoffs at "announcement minister" Spahn
With his promise of free snap tests, Spahn had to backtrack.
The health minister is getting more and more criticism for his corona policy.
The FDP calls for an end to the lockdown.
Source: WELT / Isabell Finzel
After almost four months of soft, then hard lockdown, the Minister of Health has now announced free, free rapid tests for everyone - such tests are an important accompanying measure to get out of hard lockdown.
The plausible reason: If you know who is infected, you no longer have to be locked up and you can gain a piece of normality.
But the four months of lockdown had apparently not been enough to prepare adequately.
Now the start of the tests has been postponed again for at least a week.
Christian Taaks says that from Seoul he looks "sometimes stunned" at Germany.
For him there is an explanation for why his adopted country reacted so much faster - and it is not just his previous experience with MERS.
"Here in Korea, neither the government nor the opposition use the topic to raise their profile," says Taaks.
“There are also no prime ministers who say one thing today and another tomorrow.
It is a scientific, not a political matter, and the Disease Control Authority is held in high regard.
She gives the line. "
Germany's data protection dilemma
In addition, there are “huge differences” in the use of technology, says Taaks.
"The Internet was invented and here it is also used by the state." Federalism is not necessarily the problem, local solutions are good and sensible.
It's a question of speed and digitization.
"When I hear on the radio that the infection numbers in Germany on Monday are always imprecise and practically unusable because many health authorities have not reported, then I cannot understand."
In addition to testing, the second pillar of South Korean success was so-called tracing.
Tracking infections to stop them from spreading.
The government in Seoul softened the data protection rules considerably.
The people in South Korea receive anonymized information on their mobile phones when an infected person was nearby and where they were last.
“It is really tough what personal data is read out here in order to create movement profiles.” But Taaks, after all a representative of a liberal foundation, also says: “In the end, it is a weighing up.
Citizens' freedoms are also massively restricted if one can no longer lead a normal life in lockdown. "
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As a liberal, he wonders about the concept of freedom some Germans have in the pandemic.
"We already have a different understanding of a sense of responsibility here in South Korea," says Taaks.
"In Germany the pair of terms 'freedom and responsibility' is unfortunately often confused with 'freedom and egoism', individualism and egoism are mixed up."
It is still unclear when a functioning rapid test concept will be available in Germany.
The next steps will be discussed on March 3rd.
On March 3rd, 2021, mind you, not 2020.
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