If you calculate deaths by a proportion of population, Korea handling things as “well” as the USA would means ~106,200 deaths so far, as opposed to the 2,404 deaths we’ve actually had.

i.e. The US COVID death rate is 44x worse overall than South Korea’s. One could argue that there’s a degree of apples and oranges: Koreans are more accepting of mild, necessary privacy intrusions (so track & trace was more practicable), it’s “less cosmopolitan,” fewer variants.

But at the end of the say, mishandling is also obviously a factor.