How can you claim this when South Korea's response was completely different than Vietnam and New Zealand's (no forced lockdown/stay at home orders in Korea)? If they were all following settled science, presumably all those countries would have responded the same?
I mean, look at how little people trusted the Google-Apple contact tracing model vs South Korea where they actually track everyone using QR codes and get mobile data to trace chains of infection.
It's a very different culture, and it appears to be based on their more recent experience of pandemics (like MERS and SARS). Note that Montreal has done pretty well here too, and was one of the few places in the West with a SARS outbreak.