Volunteering in a South Korea Pharmacy During the Pandemic

I had returned to South Korea as I always did every year. This year has been a little bit different, and for everyone else. Due to Corona, this trip was more anticipated than usual. Hearing the success over in South Korea, feeling pride, we packed our bags and flew. Nor like the U.S. or some European countries, when you have been to a foreign country, you have to go through 2 weeks of quarantine. After long, boring, and somewhat gloomy, I was allowed to go outside. After a few fun days, I had an idea to help a friend.

Not mentioning his name, he was a longtime family friend who was an owner of a small pharmacy. Like many of peers and my parents, knew English and came from good universities. However, knowing English and speaking English is different like World War I and World War II in Korea, One may know the language, but the pronunciation will be extremely hard to understand. After hearing that there were over 1 million foreigners, mostly Americans, I knew that I needed to help him, as the translation would be quite hard.

I started my work in April, and throughout many days, I have learned many things. For example: how they determine when you can buy masks, number of masks, number of people that can come into the pharmacy, and much more. Surprisingly, the masks weren’t free as I have believed. You have to buy them and the pharmacy has to buy from distributors, usually Samsung. Due to many Americans going to the much bigger or closer pharmacy, not many translations as I hoped. Even though it was small volunteering, I hope it made change in the pandemic.