South Koreans busy helping the community

Editor’s Note:

With more than 20 million residents, Shanghai is finding that prevention of the new coronavirus is complicated and strenuous. Governments at all levels, volunteers and ordinary citizens in about 13,000 communities have joined in the effort. Shanghai Daily reporters visited several communities to see how people are coping in the battle to control the virus at the grassroots.

Credit: Ti Gong

At the Jinxiu Jiangnan neighborhood in Minhang District, where about 40 percent of the 3,241 families in five residential complexes are South Korean, residents are helping each other in curbing the spread of novel coronavirus.

A charity organization dominated by South Koreans has donated 1,000 face masks to the neighborhood committee.

“We are part of the neighborhood, and we also want to make contributions when the neighborhood and the whole city are fighting the epidemic,” said Park Chang-joo, 58, founder of the “Angels in White” group and sole agent of South Korean company Daewoo in Shanghai.

Park has been living in Shanghai since 2002. He and his wife are well-known among Koreans in the city as they have been organizing charity bazaars every month since 2015 to raise money to help disabled people and give them Korean treats after the bazaar, initially in their Marineblues Town Restaurant and now in WaraWara, another Korean restaurant. He has also organized more than 130 volunteers, many of them South Koreans and Chinese people of the Korean minority ethnic group, to donate to the One Plus One Group for Disability.

After the novel coronavirus outbreak, the group donated 5,000 yuan (US$714) to the Wuhan branch of the Red Cross Society of China.

“It’s not a huge amount of money, but we want to show our support to Wuhan in fighting the disease,” Park said.

When he learned of the difficulty in buying face masks, Park, on behalf of the “Angels in White,” bought 1,000 online and donated them to the neighborhood committee.

“This batch of masks were purchased from Chinese online vendors and will be distributed to the security guards, who are at risk of infection as they are checking information and temperatures of people entering, including residents and visitors,” he said. “We are now contacting people in South Korea to buy more to help more people.

“Everyone faces some difficulties now in the wake of the virus breakout,” he added. “But the Chinese government are active in curbing the epidemic, and it’s important for us to follow the government’s instructions.”

To deliver the correct messages to South Korean residents in the community, Park has also established a WeChat group, which has been joined by about 250 people, to help translate notices, tables and other documents and information from Chinese to Korean for Korean residents.

“Many South Koreans can only speak a little bit Chinese and cannot understand the news or government notices,” he said. “It’s necessary for them to know such information now.”

Cui Yongfu is another active volunteer helping his South Korean neighbors.

Chen Qinghua, Party secretary of the neighborhood committee, said many South Korean residents are returning after travel or family reunions. The committee officials have to draw their attention to government notices and ask them to register their health condition and travel history in forms, including where they have been to and whether they have been to or passed by Hubei Province.

“But the notices and forms are all in Chinese or English while our officials and security guards don’t know the Korean language,” she said. “This brings problems – they cannot understand the notices and we cannot read the forms they have filled in.”

Cui offered help 15 minutes after Chen called him.

Cui, a Chinese of the Korean minority ethnic group, knows Korean, and has been helping the committee translate documents for years.

He took pictures of documents and sent notices and leaflets about preventive measures to another resident who speaks Korean. They translated the papers and printed out Korean versions for the committee. Besides posting them on bulletin boards in the neighborhood, they also helped send the documents to the South Korean chamber of commerce and WeChat groups for people from South Korea to make sure the messages were heard by as many people as possible and to raise their awareness of self-protection.

Since January 27, Cui and another three people who speak Korean have been helping translate documents and calling Korean residents to collect information and spread notices.

“Fortunately, we haven’t found any South Korean who has been diagnosed or suspected of infection or needs to be quarantined because of close contact with patients or history of traveling to Hubei,” said Chen.

More than 40 households in the neighborhood have been quarantined and about 25 are still under isolation, according to Chen.

“All the people under home quarantine are cooperative,” she said. “We’ve provided them with thermometers and they only need to report temperatures twice a day to us on WeChat. For some families in difficulty of purchasing, our officials and guards can help them. They need to leave their waste at their doors, which is disinfected and collected by our guards for professional processing.”

Only one man had reported a high temperature, and Chen called a designated clinic. An ambulance took him away around 8pm, and he was ruled free of infection about two hours later.

“Life has not changed much. We just go out less to save masks while the neighbors interact well and are always ready to help each other,” said Cui Mei-luo, 67, a South Korean resident and a volunteer with “Angels in White.”

“The government has taken effective measures and shown support to citizens,” she said, “so I’m confident that we will get over the difficult time soon.”