Karaokes and night clubs in the Seoul metropolitan area will be closed and in-person church worship will be prohibited starting from midnight on August 19th KST.

Seoul, Gyeonggi Province, Incheon, and other metropolitan areas will ban operating facilities classified as "high risk" such as bars, large academies, and buffet restaurants to take measures for quarantine.

In addition, religious facilities based in the Seoul metropolitan area are not allowed to have in-person worship services. Also, national and public facilities such as museums and art galleries will be closed as events that gather more than 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors will be banned.

The key objective of the government's measures in the Seoul metropolitan area is to temporarily ban the operation of facilities with a high risk of proliferation of COVID19. The government's objective is to strengthen quarantine measures to prevent further spread of the virus.

Currently, there are eleven facilities designated as high-risk facilities that must be closed. These include pubs, bars, entertainment facilities such as clubs, karaoke bars, indoor group exercise facilities, indoor standing performance halls, door-to-door sales companies, large private institutes with more than 300 employees, and buffet restaurants. Large distribution and logistics centers are high-risk facilities but the government excluded them from the operation restrictions considering they are essential industrial facilities,

In principle, the operation of such high-risk facilities is restricted in the second phase of social distancing, which is currently the level of quarantine. However, previously on August 15th, the government did not order these facilities to be shut down in consideration of the social and economic fallout when they announced an increase in the level of quarantine.

As the number of infected church members in the Seoul metropolitan area exploded recently, regular in-person church services are banned. The government allows only non-face-to-face worship as the government also bans other small group activities.

Museums, libraries, and art museums will also be closed. Meetings and events where more than 50 people gather indoors and more than 100 people gather outside, such as certification tests and fairs, are also prohibited.