How did Korea use technologies to manage the COVID-19 crisis? A country report

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how Korea has used technologies to respond to COVID-19. It introduces major ICT-enabled efforts for managing this infectious disease-driven crisis in four stages: screening and diagnosis (smart quarantine information system, international traveler information system, and self-health check app for entrants under special entry procedures), epidemiological investigation (epidemiological investigation system and global epidemic prevention platform for digital tracing), patient and contact management (self-quarantine safety protection app, patient management information system, and AI-based automatic counseling), and prevention (micropage, Coronamap, Coronaita, and chatbot). The Korean government’s open government principle and proactive transition toward digital transformation has led to successful control of the COVID-19 crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• coronavirus
• pandemic
• e-government
• digital government
• digital transformation

Acknowledgments

Information described in this paper is based on the two official reports (Ministry of Science and ICT, 2020; National Information Society Agency, 2020). This paper is supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A3A2924956).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taewoo Nam

Taewoo Nam is an Associate Professor in Department of Public Administration and Graduate School of Governance at Sungkyunkwan University,Korea. He is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York. His research interests comprise government innovation, open government, citizen participation, and digital government.