Seoul, Part 2: Quarantine in Korea - The importance of Flexibility During Travel in COVID Times

You've planned meticiously for months. You have all your train and tour tickets booked, you've Google-mapped (and Navar) your hotels and all the important subway stations and bus stops. You even created a detailed day-by-day itinerary, locations of each venture planned carefully with location and transportation in mind. Hours, days, weeks, months of work.
The day comes when you board your flight and you manage to (barely) survive the 14-hour flight to your destination. You breeze through customs, baggage claim and even pick up that Wifi Egg you pre-ordered from Klook. You arrive at the airport COVID-19 testing center to get your mandatory PCR test upon arrival, complete the uncomfortable nasal swab and finally make your way to your cute little AirBnB you fawned over online. 10 whole days to explore Korea! You can't wait.

Then the news you prayed you'd never hear comes.
*Ding*, the tone alerts you of a new e-mail.
The title of the message reads: (NOTICE) A result of a confirmed COVID-19 test (positive)
Your heart stops. You feel tears begin to well up in the corner of your eyes.
"Hello. This is Jongno-gu Public Health Center that manages people who are infected with corona-19. You were confirmed a result of positive for the Corona test on SEP-12TH."

A negative RAT during early quarantine in Korea

We were in a restaurant grabbing dinner after our incredibly long day when I received this e-mail. I remember going completely still. I felt frozen in disbelief, panic. What am I going to do?
I had gotten a PCR test prior to my flight and received a negative result. I had taken RAT at home twice per day for 6 days prior to the flight, all negative. Prior to our flight I had accepted that if I were to test positive on any test prior to our trip, I would (reluctantly) use our trip insurance that I so gratefully got and reschedule our flights for a few weeks later. Essentially, I knew I would never get on that plane if I knew I was going to test positive once arriving to Korea. But despite all the negative tests, here I was being told to self-quarantine for a period of 7 days.

E-mail from the local health center. I'd only hear from them once more

In the e-mail they made sure to just casually mention that violation of quarantine would result in up to one year imprisonment or a fine of 1 million won. That's pretty steep, and definitely worked to 'scare' me a bit more into compliance. At this point in the e-mail, I was definitely having a full-blown panic attack.

Poor Brent, being the supportive human he is who always wants to help, could only offer sympathy and apologies. Despite multiple attemtps to encourage Brent to go out and explore on his own, this wonderful man stayed quarantined with me the entire period despite not having to quarantine himself.

Frantically, I collected as many documents as I could to plead for my release from quarantine. This included my negative PCR test results prior to our arrival, a letter of recovery from my physician in the United States, and a time and located-stamped photo of my current negative RAT. I even had a friend in Korea contact the local health authority and attempt to persude them to, at minimum, let me re-test. Tugging at the heart strings of government employees just really isn't a thing, and unfortunately my attempts were denied. "Thank for reply. You have to quarantine until sep-18 24:00".

Well, we tried.

After my pleas for consideration of ending my quarantine, I heard nothing. No more e-mails, no phone calls, nobody showed up at my door to make sure I was where I said I was. Nor did I have anyone pull me aside when I went through customs at the airport as we departed the country. I literally heard nothing. And to this day - nothing. Radio silence.

With a major blow to our plans, we sadly had to cancel our tour to the DMZ and our portion of the trip dedicated to seeing Busan, a costal portion of the country.
And although I was devastated to spend so much of my trip just holed-up in a hotel room, I was able to constructively use that time to compeltely re-organize my itinerary and carefully select the places and activities that were most important to us. This whole situation highlighted the reason why there is a need to always be flexible when traveling. Sometimes a flight is delayed, sometimes a tour gets cancelled, sometimes a museum or site is closed, and sometimes you test positive for COVID-19 and get stuck in quarantine. No matter what the roadblock happens to be, it's important to be able to 'go with the flow' and figure out how to still make the most of your time wherever you are and not let any challenges keep you from having anything but the most wonderful and memorable experience.

On September 18, I was finally free to explore Seoul. And boy did I. With our itinerary significantly shortened, we packed our remaining days completely full. Most mornings we were up from 6:00 or 7:00 am until nearly midnight. I wasn't going to miss another second of enjoying this unique and beautiful place.

When I was in my initial planning stages, the entry requirements for South Korea included obtaining a pre-flight COVID PCR or physician-administered RAT test with negative results prior to boarding your plane, and then another PCR within 3 days of arrival in country. On September 03, 2022 the requirement for a pre-departure test ended but the on-arrival PCR test remained, now the requirement that it must be taken within 24 hours of arrival in country. Korea was also requiring travelers that tested positive upon arrival to quarantine for a period of 7 days in a government-approved facility at their own expense.
Thankfully, this requirement had seemed to loosen by the time I made my way to Seoul and I was able to self-quarantine in my own accommodations.

Regulations are changing all the time. As mentioned, the week before our trip they changed the requirement to have negative PCR-test results in hand prior to boarding your flight. We can hope that the next removal will be of the mandatory on-arrival PCR test that can create the potential scenario of someone losing that trip they had dreamed about and carefully planned for. That being said, I do not advocate for anyone to intentionally violate any mandates in place (such as testing or quarantine), and I certainly don't reccommend ever breaking the law in a country you are visiting. This was a frustrating and disappointing situation that definitely created some challenges in our trip, and I think I felt even more frustration that this quaranted felt more like a strong suggestion instead of something mandatory.

 
MAJOR UPDATE:As of October 01, 2022 travelers will no longer be required to complete an on-arrival PCR test when entering Korea Talk about being late to the party...but we're happy to hear this for other travelers!

Despite our rough start and initial negative experience, I look foward to returning to Korea again one day. Our time we did get to spend exploring Seoul (and Nami Island) was unforgettable and I am so grateful we were able to visit this wonderful place.


For more information on entry requirements for U.S. Citizens to travel to South Korea, visit the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in the Republic of Korea official website