Assessing the South Korean Model of Emergency Management during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented global public health crisis, and governments have implemented various responses with varying degrees of effectiveness. South Korea's approach, which has involved minimal lockdown in order to "flatten the curve", and which offers an alternative for many democracies, has attracted much attention. Based on in-depth interviews with public health professionals and policy advisors in government agencies, this article analyses how well South Korea's response to COVID-19 complies with the expectations of good governance, and assesses the strengths and challenges of the Korean model. Our analysis shows that South Korea has been reactive rather than preventive/passive amid waves of clusters such as outbreaks in nightclubs, e-commerce warehouses, schools, hospitals and religious gatherings. The government has used a range of countermeasures, including contact tracing, diagnostic testing, media briefings and text alerts. At the same time, the challenges for the Korean approach have been concerns about privacy, fatigue over emergency alerts and politicisation.

Does the Medium Matter? Linking Citizens’ Use of Communication Platform for Information about Urban Policies to Decision to Trust in Local Government

“…For example, cyber cafes on popular portal websites often provide forums in which citizens congregate to actively discuss current issues related to the government [3,69]. The information spread via these online forums and social media have been used to influence public policy on more than a few occasions [47,70]. The public sector has also created various online forums and social media platforms through which citizens can participate in and influence administrative processes [71,72].…”

COVID-19: effective policymaking depends on trust in experts, politicians, and the public

“…Comparing these elements helps explain the international reputation of the UK and US for delayed and insufficient responses. It may also encourage lesson-learning from: more successful COVID-19 responses in countries such as New Zealand, South Korea, and Singapore (Mazey and Richardson 2020;Kim et al 2020;Woo 2020); or, previous public health crises in relation to public trust in government policy on issues such as Ebola and BSE (Blair, Morse, and Tsai 2017;Sell et al 2016;Forbes 2004) or policymaker trust in experts during H1N1 vaccination (Baekkeskov 2016). However, while there is much for the UK and US to learn, most comparative studies do not define trust well enough to show how it fits into the story (Powell and King-Hill 2020).…”

Socioecological factors' effect on the subjective experience of COVID-19 quarantine policy in Korea: Consensual qualitative research

“…They felt safe not only because they were coming to their home country, but also because they could be under Korea's care. In fact, Korea's response to COVID has been heralded as one of the more exemplary models, since the government recognized the need to engage in preventive measures, such as travel restrictions, health screening, quarantine and testing, and public awareness, early on [21]. Subsequently, Korea's response to COVID gave the participants a sense of safety, which resulted in their feelings of gratitude despite being in distressful self-quarantine situations.…”

“…Participants' exosystem in uenced the subjective experience the most. Although aggressive contact tracing could have raised privacy infringement concerns, many felt protected through their interactions with the Korean government [21]. This can be explained by Korea's 'trace, test, and treat strategy', as this approach traces speci cally to enable safe testing and seamless treatment [28].…”