As soon as South Korea confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on January 20, 2020, the government set in motion a disease control protocol that was to become the envy of other developed nations. By the end of March 2020, South Korea had done more than 300,000 tests, more than 40 times higher per capita than the United States, which confirmed its first infection on nearly the same day. A year later, South Korea, a country of 51 million, has some 123,000 cases and 1,800 deaths. The United States, with a population more than six times as large, has breached 32 million cases and 579,000 deaths.

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