Lee Jong-chul, a 57-year-old truck driver who lives just south of Seoul, says it took little more than a minute to access his 400,000 won ($330) cash handout from the South Korean government earlier this month.
For 2.8 million Korean households it didn’t take any time at all: The money was automatically wired to their bank accounts without even an application.
In nearby Japan, hundreds of residents in the Setagaya Ward of Tokyo had to line up for hours outside a municipal office to try and process their claims for ¥100,000 ($930) handouts. Many of them were queuing because there was no other way to get their passwords reset for online applications they were supposed to be able to complete at home.