South Korea’s Early Response to COVID-19: Mechanismic Explanations and Lessons

• In Event: Government Agencies and the COVID Pandemic

Abstract

South Korea was a hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic with the second most reported COVID-19 cases in the world by February 2020. However, the country quickly responded and contained additional infections. Hence, the question, “what did they do differently?” Building on empirical fingerprints from over 1,450 pages of South Korean government press briefings between January 2020 and June 2020, we capture the sufficiency-based mechanism in operation with two key findings. First, mechanisms matter in pandemic containment, i.e. sequence, complementary activities, and systematic settings are consequential to the witnessed outcome. Second, central government-led efforts were effective and in parts necessary to deal with invisible and rapidly spreading infections beyond a single jurisdictional boundary. These findings lead to a timely discussion in the U.S. on whether pandemic responses should continue to be framed in the same intergovernmental and decentralized administration scholarly limelight with other natural disasters.

Author

• Shin Kue Ryu, Idaho State University