Mass Quarantine Hits Gangnam Hagwon Hard
This would have been an exciting week for about 30 new teachers starting a new term for Chungdahm Learning, the publicly traded English academy with over 60,000 students and 121 locations across the nation.
But the standard butterflies and worries about sweaty palms and shuffled papers instantly transformed to back-chatter as the prospect of high fevers, tongue depressors, and N95 masks came roaring to the forefront. This was most definitely not in any training manual.
This all began with training. When the fifth reported swine flu case in Korea was confirmed on May 23rd, public health officials scrambled to find out who the 23-year-old American woman had come in contact with. It turned out to be quite a few, as she had been receiving new instructor training for a week with about 30 other instructor trainees from the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere.
Unlike the previous four flu cases reported in Korea, this case revealed a potential for much wider exposure due to the large group of staff, trainers, and teachers involved. Public health officials saw this as the potential harbinger of an epidemic beginning at hagwons all across the country and thus acted swiftly to contain the situation.
Over the weekend the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) cast one of the widest nets in recent memory to bring everyone in, going as far away as Busan to locate the instructors.
Some inside the quarantine compound have indicated that the dragnet brought in between 50 and 70 people initially, and they were split up across at least two locations. Although these estimates are anecdotal (in contrast to the KT’s report that 18 instructors were in isolation which were plain off the mark), one of the quarantine locations has been confirmed. Over thirty instructors have been placed, with not just a touch of irony, at a training facility in Seocho-dong.
As for Chungdahm, they are now left with gaps in their teaching schedules and the nightmarish prospect of moms all over the nation pulling their kids out of school. While teachers have reportedly received their books to allow them to prepare for classes, it is uncertain when if ever they will return to class and managers are still grappling with ways to get through this first-of-this-size staffing crisis.
As of Monday, the company has voluntarily closed schools until June 2 (nine days from now) after which there are plans to re-open their schools for normal operations. This is assuming no further employees fall ill.
By order of the Korea CDC, some staff members who had been in contact with the teacher trainees last week have also been told to stay home for a period of nine days and to report if they fall ill.
While the drama unfolds in quarantine, it is all quiet at the Chungdahm training center. In some ways you might have expected a scene from I Am Legend (video) but instead you get the reflective silence of a tough day gone, followed by the whispered thought of an uncertain tomorrow.
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