Society

Avian Influenza



Since November 2016, a catastrophic avian influenza (AI) has plagued South Korea. Due to the AI, many chickens had to be destroyed causing the price of chicken and eggs to soar. When communicable diseases like AI occur, it is very important for the government and related agencies to react as quickly as they can. When this outbreak of AI started, however, the Korean government showed their inability to respond to it. Of course, when it began, most of the government was paralyzed because of Choi Soon-sil and Park Geun-hye scandal, but it shouldn’t have been. The relevant agency failed to stop the AI from spreading across the country.

This highly infectious and mortal strain of AI (H5N6) in Korea is also in Japan, but there is a large difference in the damage it has caused. In Korea, about 30 million chickens were killed over a 50-day period, and it’s expected more will be killed. However, in Japan during the same period, only one million chickens got infected and were killed. As soon as the outbreak was detected, the Japanese government issued the highest level alert. However, in Korea, the government issued the highest level alert only after more than 10 million chickens were infected and destroyed. This difference shows that the Korean government failed to handle this situation properly to prevent a more serious outbreak.

Since millions of chickens had to be killed, chicken farms don’t have enough chickens to lay eggs to meet the demand. This caused an insane increase in egg prices. Normally in Korea, a pack of 30 eggs costs 4,000 to 5,000 KRW. Since the outbreak of AI, the price of a 30-pack of eggs increased to around 15,000 KRW. This has caused the Korean government to increase egg imports and lower customs on egg imports.

The Korean government failed to manage to stop the disease before it had widely spread, which caused egg prices to skyrocket. The Korean government failed to manage this crisis in the midst of a political disaster, but that situation should not prevent the government from executing its responsibilities. Hopefully, the Korean government learned a valuable lesson from this crisis and won’t make the same mistakes again. The Korean people deserve better from their government, especially during times of crisis.