COVID-19 crisis and crisis management in South Korea, 2020–2021

ABSTRACT

Thanks to its effective quarantine and disinfection practices, South Korea has responded relatively successfully to COVID-19. In addition to historical experience, this success could be attributed to the sacrifice of healthcare workers. Despite the country’s success in controlling the spread of COVID-19, many socially underprivileged have suffered socioeconomic difficulties. Although South Korea has maintained a prosperous economy with sound fiscal management, budgetary allocations have been insufficient and countermeasures against the crisis were too strongly biased toward business interests. The economic bureaucrats who led these policy responses were preoccupied with revitalizing capital accumulation and fiscal soundness, and elected officials failed to control them. While the South Korean government has promoted ICT innovation and online platform development as new alternatives for the post-COVID-19 era, these are hardly solutions to existing problems, and a capitalist utilization of these alternatives will cause other problems.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• crisis management
• neoliberalism
• new deal
• South Korea

Acknowledgements

I thank Dr. Yuncheol Nam for his helpful comments and other help. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of Globalizations for their thoughtful comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Unless otherwise indicated, references to Korea in this article refer to the Republic of Korea/South Korea.

2 A chaebol is a diversified and large-scale conglomerate form of capital governed dynastically by an owner and the owner’s family (Kim, 2019, p. 22).

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Notes on contributors

Kyung-Pil Kim

Kyung-Pil Kim (Korea University), is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Korea University. His research foci include neoliberalism/neoliberalization, capital accumulation of the chaebols, platform economy and civil–military relations. He has published his research in some journals among which are Monthly Review, International Journal of Asian Studies, and Labor History