Government to Unveil Draft of New Social Distancing Measures Next Week... "Gathering Opinions from Self-Employed and Others"

"Initiating Draft Discussions by Collecting Opinions from Previous Forums"

On the 15th, when social distancing in the Seoul metropolitan area was eased to Level 2, office workers were having meals at a restaurant in Seoul. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Ji-hee] The government plans to draft a revised social distancing plan as early as next week. During the process of finalizing the revision, it intends to once again gather opinions from small business owners and self-employed individuals.

On the 16th, Son Young-rae, head of the Social Strategy Division at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said in a back briefing, "We have started working on revising the social distancing measures and are currently discussing internally to prepare a draft by compiling opinions from previous public forums. Our goal is to create a draft revision by next week and release it in a form that allows for public feedback."

Previously, the government held two public forums to prepare the revision plan. During these forums, opinions were exchanged regarding the criteria and timing issues of the current social distancing system. There were also criticisms that the socio-economic costs borne by small business owners and the self-employed due to restrictions on multi-use facilities were excessive.

At the forum on the 9th, Professor Ki Moran of the National Cancer Center proposed revising the current five-level social distancing system into a three-level system. Regarding this, Son said, "Professor Ki’s concern is that the messages for each stage of the current system are not clear. The five-level system is segmented and complicated, so we believe that improvement measures should be derived in this revision."

Son added, "Once the draft is prepared, we will proceed with a public consultation process and also listen to opinions from related associations and organizations. We are considering not only relay meetings but also other methods of gathering feedback."

Earlier, President Moon Jae-in also announced at the Blue House senior secretaries meeting the day before that a new social distancing plan would be implemented starting in March.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.