It's been bloody obvious for months that South Korea can't control Covid through test and trace alone without massive, economically-damaging social distancing and business closure measures - every time they lift them cases go up, and there's been a worrying increase in cases not linked to any previous known cases which implies an exponentially increasing pool of unknown infections entirely unimpacted by contact tracing. (They also have massively less testing than the UK and European countries, so they're probably detecting a small fraction of those unlinked cases.) One of the big things which seems to have changed in South Korea is that unlike the last few times there's no longer the political will to impose those restrictions. You wouldn't have known this from the British press, which has been pushing hard on the idea that they succeeded at this to convince people that our country could've too if it wasn't for our incompetent government (which they hate due to Brexit).
More generally, the press here almost exclusively report the facts that make the UK look like a failure and South Korea look like a success. So for example, the BBC reported on the removal of those social distancing measures, framing it as proof that South Korea's test and trace was so effective they could even reopen nightclubs... like, the day after they did, but making it sound like something they'd done a while ago with no ill effects. They then ran loads of reports on important topics like BTS whilst ignoring the explosion in cases. So everyone who gets their news from the British press is convinced that our government is incompetent, keeps on doing U-turns that damage businesses and the economy, recklessly reopened knowing it would result in the virus spreading, is behind the rest of the world in Covid testing, etc when we should've acted like South Korea... when in reality South Korea was even more like that and if the UK government had taken the same actions they'd have been described in that exact same negative way rather than glossed over and omitted. It's a complete and utter media illusion.
The British government is utterly incompetent. It’s tiresome to even list their many many major failures, but the app and PPE are two straightforward examples that could have been lifted from a political satire.
More generally, the press here almost exclusively report the facts that make the UK look like a failure and South Korea look like a success. So for example, the BBC reported on the removal of those social distancing measures, framing it as proof that South Korea's test and trace was so effective they could even reopen nightclubs... like, the day after they did, but making it sound like something they'd done a while ago with no ill effects. They then ran loads of reports on important topics like BTS whilst ignoring the explosion in cases. So everyone who gets their news from the British press is convinced that our government is incompetent, keeps on doing U-turns that damage businesses and the economy, recklessly reopened knowing it would result in the virus spreading, is behind the rest of the world in Covid testing, etc when we should've acted like South Korea... when in reality South Korea was even more like that and if the UK government had taken the same actions they'd have been described in that exact same negative way rather than glossed over and omitted. It's a complete and utter media illusion.