Tracking bodies in question: telecom companies, mobile data, and surveillance platforms in South Korea’s epidemic governance

ABSTRACT

In the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, many countries across the world have developed new health surveillance technologies using digital tools and communication data to monitor and manage confirmed and suspected carriers of the virus. This article demonstrates the growing centrality of mobile network operators in managing global health crises through a case study of South Korea’s epidemic governance. In South Korea, KT, one of the country’s three telecommunications companies, has been actively developing and investing in health surveillance platforms since 2015, promoting that its big-data-based surveillance and ICT infrastructures may prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Conducting a situational analysis of archival materials, I document the process through which such mobile network operators emerge as essential producers of the data infrastructures that shape the understanding and management of public health emergencies. The article also addresses the sociocultural implications of such private technology corporations’ capturing of emergency power. In the end, I argue that Korea’s public health surveillance systems are increasingly constructed within the capitalist logic of the telecom industry, mainly via ‘platformization’ – a shift that offers telecom firms to transform from network to platform operators by extracting and aggregating subscribers' data. The case analyzed here demonstrates how granting such extraordinary authority to ICT companies during national emergencies becomes routinized, and even instrumentalized for economic purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Health security
• surveillance
• mobile data
• infectious disease
• pandemic
• platforms
• telecom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This act is a general law that aims to protect the unnecessary collection, unauthorized use or disclosure, and abuse of personal data.

2 This act is a special law that aims to protect privacy from the divulging, abuse, and misuse of location information, provide a safe environment for using location information, and activate the use of location information.

3 According to the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, Drug Utilization Review (DUR) is an authorized, structured, ongoing review of prescribing, dispensing, and use of medication. South Korea has implemented the nationwide computerized DUR monitoring system since December 2010.

4 This diagram was retrieved from the KCDC website. Texts on the diagram were inserted by the author to assist with readers' understanding of the data flow.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Youngrim Kim

Youngrim Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She focuses on critical studies on technology and infrastructure, particularly in the context of East Asia. She is currently investigating South Korea’s pandemic technogovernance from the 2015 MERS epidemic to the COVID-19 pandemic. Her research is based on science and technology studies, digital studies, and critical data studies. [Email: [email protected]]