Dr. Jeong Eun-Kyeong, commissioner of the newly formed Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, is among Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2020. (Screen shot of Time article)

By Lee Hana

Photos = Screen shots of Time articles

The head of the newly formed Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) and the director of this year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Parasite," are on Time magazine's list of this year's 100 most influential people.

KDCA Commissioner Jeong Eun-Kyeong appeared in the leaders category, chosen based on her exceptional performance in the country's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Director Bong Joon-ho was chosen as an artist. 

President Moon Jae-in praised the doctor in his message to Time, saying, "As the first female chief of KDCA and also a preventive ­medicine specialist, Commissioner Jeong has enhanced the organization's preparedness." 

"Six months before the COVID-19 outbreak, she helped create a manual on response procedures for unidentified mass infections, and conducted drills on a sophisticated emergency-­response algorithm." 

Quoting a line by Bernard Rieux from the Albert Camus novel "The Plague" saying, "The only way to fight the plague is with decency," the president said he "believes Commissioner Jeong's decency and dedication are indeed a story worth ­telling — one that will serve as an inspiration for the many Commissioner Jeongs around the world desperately fighting COVID-19, and for humanity as we advance toward the post-COVID-19 era."

Director Bong Joon-ho is on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of 2020. (Screen shot from Time article)

Actress Tilda Swinton, who starred in Bong's 2013 film "Snowpiercer," shared her thoughts on the director. 

"This is the filmmaker who, this year, has risen into the 2020 vision of the entire cine­passionate planet like a new sun. Whip-smart, highly skilled, supremely cine­literate, exuberant, irreverent, self-determining, deeply romantic, with a voracious delight in the absurd, highly principled, precision-tuned, compassionate to the last: his films have always been all this," she wrote. 

On Sept. 23, President Moon shared news of the two nominations on social media, writing on his Facebook page, "TIME magazine and the Korean people shared similar views." He added that he "hopes the nomination offers some consolation to the Korean people struggling through this difficult time."

The full list of Time's list is found in the link below:

https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/