CHAPTER 4

COVID-19 and the Politics of Surveillance in South Korea

Myungji Yang

Five years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought about significant changes in our daily lives, including strict lockdowns, self-isolation, remote work, and mass vaccination drives, the world slowly has gotten back to “normal”—returning to school and work in person, resuming travel and social activities, and being freed from regular COVID tests and mask mandates. Yet the pandemic has left indelible scars and inflicted innumerable costs. While all societies were greatly disrupted by the pandemic, how they coped with the disaster varied. How to understand the different national responses and varied outcomes is a challenging task for social scientists who study disasters, crisis management, and governance.

Looking at South Korea, the country’s apparent success at containing COVID-19 was possible due to extensive surveillance infrastructures, which have the potential to harm human rights, privacy, and democracy. By discussing the background of the effective pandemic control regime in South Korea, I will raise, rather than answer, questions about the subtle balance between disaster management and democratic practices.

During the pandemic, many so-called advanced Western countries, such as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, revealed ineffective crisis management systems when their failure to respond promptly to COVID-19 resulted in horrifying human casualties. By contrast, there was general agreement that New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and South Korea had contained the virus effectively. Among these countries, South Korea is a particularly notable case. Without resorting to radical measures such as closed borders and comprehensive lockdowns, as other countries did, South Korea managed to flatten the curve of infections and maintained lower fatality rates. As of January 12, 2024, South Korea’s total number of pandemic deaths was 35,687, while deaths per 100,000 people amounted to 66.50. The fatality rate is 0.1 percent, which is the lowest in the world.1 Despite some social distancing, people were able to maintain something like a normal life in the midst of the pandemic, including social gatherings and domestic travel. Accordingly, South Korea has been held up by foreign media, health experts, and political leaders as an exemplary case of national crisis management.

At this point, scholars have analyzed how South Korea was able to effectively control the outbreak without restricting people’s movements or greatly disrupting everyday life. These studies have provided insights into the successful aspects of South Korea’s containment of COVID-19, ranging from deeply embedded Confucian values—a collectivist culture and obedient citizens—to an efficient, centralized bureaucracy and an extensive medical infrastructure.2 Here, I will take a critical perspective on a relatively underexplored factor in this success: deeply embedded surveillance infrastructures that not only enabled health authorities to quickly identify and trace those who had been in contact with the virus but also helped discipline the behavior of individuals. I examine the technological and social forms of surveillance infrastructures. The first includes extensive and well-developed information networks and communication systems, while the second consists of methods to enhance peer pressure and monitor the behavior of others, which made individuals more pliant and intent on avoiding social blame. South Korea’s success in controlling COVID-19 would not have been possible without these underlying surveillance infrastructures. What is concerning is that massive surveillance utilizing these infrastructures could be normalized in the future.

South Korea’s Response to COVID-19

At the beginning of the pandemic, South Korea avoided a disaster through the implementation of extensive testing and rigorous quarantine measures, which were common strategies among the countries that contained COVID-19 relatively successfully. Having been forced to deal with a series of infectious disease outbreaks in recent years, the South Korean government had developed a highly efficient, well-coordinated emergency response system, using highly advanced information and communications technology. The nation’s public health control hub, the Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, provided timely and effective control measures. Led by top scientists and health experts, the Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention held daily public briefings from the start of the outbreak.

One of the most important steps taken by the South Korean government in the pandemic’s early stage was investing in extensive and speedy testing. The government’s considerable investment in research and development incentivized private companies to develop test kits quickly, and the government immediately authorized their emergency use.3 By setting up easily accessible walk-up and drive-through testing sites, the government increased its testing capacity to the point that an average of 12,000 people—and sometimes as many as 20,000—were tested a day.4 By late June 2020, 1.17 million people had been tested for the virus, amounting to 2.3 percent of the entire population.5

In addition, the government provided continuously updated information to keep the public informed about the epidemic. By sending emergency text message alerts to all mobile phones through the country’s cellular broadcasting service, it notified residents about new cases and warned them about potential virus hot spots.6 For example, every person in the country received an emergency text when a local administration confirmed new cases. Municipal websites posted detailed information about the newly infected—their ages, the areas where they lived, all the places they had visited, how they became infected, and where they were tested and treated. Thus, those who happened to be at the same place at the same time as an infected person could be informed and tested quickly. Such contacts might have otherwise gone unnoticed for days or weeks.

The government also closely monitored populations at risk of exposure to the virus, particularly travelers arriving from abroad. These populations were required to install self-diagnosis applications on their mobile phones, submit all information related to their health, and be tested for COVID-19 upon entering the country. They were also required to self-quarantine for fourteen days, and local health care workers checked on their condition daily via phone. Through its close monitoring system, the South Korean government was able to prevent further spread of the virus from overseas.

Reliance on Digital Surveillance Infrastructures

These seemingly successful and efficient state actions, which are characteristic of developmental states, are a familiar story in South Korea.7 During its period of industrialization and economic development, South Korea’s competent, well-organized, top-down state bureaucracy played a crucial role in promoting rapid growth. The historical legacies of the developmental state functioned perfectly at a time of public crisis. The government worked closely with medical and public health experts, kept the populace informed about the ongoing risk of infection, devoted resources to developing fast testing kits, and closely monitored the spread of the virus—all of which were possible due to the government’s efficient, effective, and responsive bureaucracy. These measures were intertwined with legal and technological infrastructures that could be mobilized immediately in crisis situations, but an important result was that surveillance became ubiquitous in daily life. The South Korea’s Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act allows state officials to access the personal information of both confirmed and potential patients without a warrant.8 Under this act, Articles 6 and 34-2 refer to citizens’ “right to know” and mandate that the minister of health and welfare promptly disclose information about the “movement paths, transportation means, medical treatment institutions, and contacts of patients of the infectious disease.” Health authorities can request that private telecommunications companies and the National Police Agency share the “location information of patients . . . and [of] persons likely to be infected.” The precise details of each patient’s whereabouts are acquired through CCTV footage, credit card histories, and cellular geolocation data. After South Korea’s complete failure in containing the MERS outbreak in 2015—ending up with the second-highest rate of infections (186) and deaths (36) behind Saudi Arabia—there was widespread discussion about improving public safety, and the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act was amended so that the centralization and publicization of personal information would be possible during infectious disease emergencies.9 This legal framework allows the South Korean government to acquire relevant and necessary data, rapidly trace the infection routes of confirmed patients, and reveal critical information to the public to help curb outbreaks.

These legal provisions could only work effectively if they were paired with highly developed technological infrastructures. A global leader in information and communications technology, South Korea has one of the most extensive broadband and mobile networks in the world, where almost everybody has access to the internet. Nearly all citizens own mobile phones, with 95 percent owning smartphones. Approximately 860,000 4G and 5G transceivers, which cover the entire country, record phone locations automatically with complete accuracy.10 Other means of observation are widespread in South Korea. For example, as of 2021, there were almost 1.46 million CCTVs in operation.11 This represents a fourfold increase within the last ten years. The number of new cameras installed annually has been close to or even exceeded 100,000. Most cars in South Korea come equipped with so-called black boxes that record information related to traffic accidents, and there are 4.5 million of these. Furthermore, as credit and debit cards can be used as transportation passes and are rapidly replacing cash as primary means of payment, information about people’s daily routines is logged every second. Thus, state officials could take advantage of these existing information infrastructures to precisely trace the movements of the newly infected and determine the time they spent at each location. It would be difficult to explain South Korea’s effective containment of the coronavirus without mentioning the government’s enormous capacity to track and monitor its citizens.

The persistence of COVID-19 prompted the state to strengthen its monitoring systems with advanced technology. For example, following a rise in violations of mandatory self-quarantine rules, the government adopted an improved smartphone application to monitor those in quarantine more closely. Designed to alert health authorities of any abnormalities in location data, the app sent a warning signal if a phone was left in one place for too long or if any movement was not traced, based on the possibility that the phone had been left behind while the owner went outside. The government later adopted a QR code–based registration system for visitors to high-risk areas, such as bars, clubs, and religious and entertainment facilities.12 Visitors were required to download a onetime QR code via a smartphone app, which could be scanned at the entrance. By digitally registering people’s information, this new system could rapidly detect those who were likely to be infected and trace their contacts once a local outbreak arose. The national commitment to overcoming the pandemic, combined with readily available technology, expanded and legitimized the deeply embedded surveillance systems in South Korea.

The extensive use of and reliance on surveillance and security techniques also make us raise critical concerns about infringements on privacy and basic rights. Local authorities released private information about each patient, and their daily routines became public knowledge. This information included their gender and age, where (neighborhood and block) they lived, where they went to school or work, what form of transportation they used, and all the places they visited. This release of abundant personal information arguably provided too many details about peoples’ personal lives, which may not have been necessary to contain the virus.

Where Digital Surveillance Meets Social Shaming

The heavy reliance on digital surveillance infrastructures was supported and strengthened by informal forms of social surveillance. In addition to the top-down surveillance implemented by the South Korean government, strong peer pressure and monitoring behaviors made people extremely careful about avoiding the virus and strictly following the rules to avoid being blamed and stigmatized.

As detailed information about the movements of infected persons became public and subject to discussion online and in the media, the infected were often condemned for their “reckless” behavior. For example, the public could know whether infected persons had worn a mask outside, where they had been, and whether their activities had been “essential.” If they were found to have not been careful about their movements, they were harshly criticized in online spaces as “irresponsible” and even “immoral” citizens “lacking in civic virtue” and were stigmatized as virus spreaders. Indeed, according to one survey, respondents felt more afraid of their specific whereabouts being publicized and the possibility of being publicly shamed for getting infected than they were of the disease itself.13

It was common to observe excessive criticism against the infected. In March 2020, a mother and daughter, who had arrived in Seoul from the United States, traveled to Jeju Island and were subsequently found to be infected with the coronavirus. It became publicly known that although they had some symptoms, they did not cancel their trip and went to many restaurants and shops during the four days they were in Jeju. Derisively called “Gangnam mother and daughter” online and in the media, they were accused of being “inconsiderate” and “harmful” by freely visiting many places and spreading the virus to others. The governor of Jeju publicly blamed the pair for bringing the virus to the island and sued them for causing economic damage to local businesses.14 While the behavior of this mother and daughter may be seen as undesirable, they were subjected to severe criticism that verged on harassment.

When social minorities were infected with the coronavirus, they were especially vulnerable to hate speech and scapegoating. One outbreak originated at a nightclub in the Itaewon district in May 2020. A twenty-nine-year-old had gone barhopping in Itaewon—one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Seoul—a few days before he was diagnosed with COVID-19. Health officials tracked down his movements and posted the names of the nightclubs he had visited online. After several media outlets reported that the main clientele of these clubs were LGBT people,15 hate speech against them proliferated on the internet. Many of the clubgoers were afraid of revealing their sexual orientation and being outed in a society where homophobia remains common, so health authorities faced difficulties in reaching them. The clubgoers also provided false contact information to the clubs and did not answer phone calls from the authorities. Although the city government solicited anonymous information, it was able to identify the subjects through location data from credit card records, security camera footage, and base transceiver station logs. The fact that fifty-six thousand people associated with the Itaewon night clubs were tested within several days revealed the magnitude of South Korea’s testing capacity and informational power but also illustrated how surveillance systems had become densely woven into every corner of society. And in cases where the identities of racial and sexual minorities were exposed publicly, those in already vulnerable social positions were at risk of experiencing even more aggressive stigmatization.

Despite the fact that anybody could catch COVID-19, being confirmed as a positive case meant that details about a person’s movements and other private information would be indiscriminately revealed. It was often assumed that COVID-19 patients had been infected because of how they behaved, such as wearing masks improperly, not wearing them at all, or ignoring social distancing rules. The news often featured stories about citizens reporting their neighbors or other people to the police or municipal offices for violating quarantine rules. In a sense these situations were reminiscent of South Korea’s authoritarian past, when “suspicious” persons had to be immediately reported to the police because they could be North Korean spies out to destroy South Korea. Although this comparison may be a little far-fetched, the national social surveillance culture is always active, and ordinary citizens are highly watchful for anyone they think might harm the common good or social peace. Thus, it is not surprising to see survey results where 80 percent of respondents supported the use of electronic bracelets for infected people during the self-quarantine period to strengthen surveillance and contain the virus more effectively.16 Although this never happened in practice, it demonstrates that even if surveillance is not imposed from top-down, members of society can widely accept it and even demand it.

As infection was reduced to an individual’s wrongdoing, each person became concerned with avoiding the virus at all costs. This high level of social pressure may have helped citizens recognize the risks of the virus more clearly and behave accordingly. However, many of those who were infected, due to the very nature of the pandemic, had to endure the negative social gaze. The emotional burdens that the infected bore—in addition to their physical suffering—seem to have been much higher in South Korea compared with other countries.

Where Do We Stand, and Where Are We Going?

In March 2022 with the rise of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, South Korea had the highest infection rate in the world, with more than five hundred thousand daily cases—a record-breaking number up to that point. Cases had exploded in February 2022, and the situation seemed to be getting out of control, with hospital beds filling up rapidly with new patients. Because of the sudden rise in cases, health care workers struggled to cope.

I made a short visit to South Korea during the Omicron outbreak. Even though I was fully vaccinated, including a booster shot, and had tested negative, I still had to undergo self-quarantine for a week. At the time, everyone who tested positive in South Korea had to self-quarantine for seven days, and all people arriving from abroad had to do the same. All international travelers had to get a polymerase chain reaction test within twenty-four hours of arrival and had to do so again on the fifth or sixth day afterward. When I went to be tested at a local public health center, I was shocked to see an endless line of people waiting several hours in the cold. Moreover, only mid- or large-sized hospitals administered polymerase chain reaction tests. As positive cases were increasing rapidly, thousands of people needed to be tested as soon as possible. When there were only hundreds of daily cases, it was relatively easier for health care workers to monitor COVID patients and maintain contact tracing. But when there were more than three hundred thousand cases a day, it was almost impossible to keep track of people’s movements and contain the virus. The government seemed to respond by focusing on patients who exhibited severe symptoms, but official policies did not keep up with the rapidly changing situation, and the state’s response seemed slow and inflexible. The zero-COVID policy could not be sustained in this new situation.

Toward the end of my self-quarantine period, I made a doctor’s appointment to follow up on medical procedures I had received the previous summer. As soon as the receptionist entered my name in the system, a message told her that I had arrived in Korea a few days earlier and that my quarantine was effective until a certain date. Although the close monitoring policy had been relaxed by that time,17 I realized that a highly centralized information system existed and that a great deal of private information was being shared among various organizations. Later I learned that as soon as I arrived in Korea, the Korea Immigration Service had shared the details of my arrival with the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service and all local hospitals and clinics. This centralized information database system could be utilized to monitor and surveil COVID patients and those who were under self-quarantine. Without realizing, our movements are thoroughly recorded, shared, and directed, subject to constant scrutiny much bigger and denser than Foucault’s panopticon.18

Of course, social surveillance is not new or unique to South Korea, and it is implemented and regulated to varying degrees in different countries. Over the last decade, technology and social media companies have accelerated their efforts to gather and trace data, and we have both wittingly and unwittingly provided much private information. The pandemic over the last five years has only facilitated the expansion of surveillance technology into public health and other sectors. We should be on guard against the normalization of mass surveillance and the possibility of antidemocratic practices.

After the 9/11 attacks, we witnessed the US government resorting to invasive practices, including restricting civil liberties through warrantless wiretapping and recklessly collecting personal information in the name of counterterrorism. Similarly, under the Park Geun-hye administration (2013–2017), the South Korean government and intelligence agencies investigated and surveilled private citizens who were critical of the government and put them on blacklists. As these examples indicate, there is always the possibility that a country with an enormous database capacity and advanced surveillance technology can be placed in the hands of a less democratic and less accountable government. And once such a government establishes an expansive surveillance regime, it is extremely difficult to roll it back, which opens the door to other uses of personal data.

The experience of the pandemic provided an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between emergency measures, political surveillance and monitoring, and democratic governance. While temporarily harsh measures may be generally accepted during a crisis, it is also possible for authoritarian leaders to take advantage of these kinds of situations for their own political ends. It will be a challenging task for any democratic country to protect both public health and individual rights in the post–COVID-19 era. Governments must have a strong commitment both to protecting public health and private information with the utmost caution. Strict legal procedures should be clearly stipulated to prevent states from recklessly collecting private information. Such information should be used solely for containing the epidemic and must be immediately discarded so that it cannot be used for other purposes.

At the same time, we need to think deeply and start serious conversations about whether it is acceptable to be surveilled constantly and if it is considered potentially irresponsible. By relying on powerful surveillance infrastructures, the state shows that it considers us to be ungovernable subjects who will act recklessly without close monitoring.19 When we become too comfortable with widespread state surveillance, we give our freedom and autonomy away to the government and security corporations. How to place a national surveillance system under popular scrutiny and how not to become subordinated to its gaze are challenging contemporary questions. We also need to understand that an extensive surveillance system will not necessarily ensure public health or safety. The shape of our future will depend on how much we accept surveillance.

Notes

1. 1.  “Mortality Analyses,” Coronavirus Resource Center, Johns Hopkins University, last modified March 16, 2023, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality.
2. 2.  Timothy Martin and Marcus Walker, “East vs. West: Coronavirus Fight Tests Divergent Strategies,” Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/east-vs-west-coronavirus-fight-tests-divergent-strategies-11584110308; Max Fisher and Sang-Hun Choe, “How South Korea Flattened the Coronavirus Curve,” New York Times, March 23, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-flatten-curve.html; Larry Diamond, “Democracy Versus the Pandemic: The Coronavirus Is Emboldening Autocrats the World Over,” Foreign Affairs, June 13, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-06-13/democracy-versus-pandemic; and Thomas Pepinsky, “Political Economy and Democratic Capacity to Respond to Pandemics,” Items, May 21, 2020, https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/democracy-and-pandemics/political-economy-and-democratic-capacity-to-respond-to-pandemics/.
3. 3.  Government of the Republic of Korea, Flattening the Curve on COVID-19: How Korea Responded to a Pandemic Using ICT, April 15, 2020, https://www.corrections.go.kr/moj_eng/1765/subview.do;jsessionid=c5egfVdI-i5mE68jC9vGDIBbRxeZ0B6WpPbR2De9.wizard-16-ctw8s?enc=Zm5jdDF8QEB8JTJGYmJzJTJGbW9qX2VuZyUyRjUxJTJGNTIyODIyJTJGYXJ0Y2xWaWV3LmRvJTNG.
4. 4.  Justin McCurry, “Test, Trace, Contain: How South Korea Flattened Its Coronavirus Curve,” The Guardian, April 22, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/test-trace-contain-how-south-korea-flattened-its-coronavirus-curve.
5. 5.  “1.17 million, 2.3% of the Total Population Got Tested,” Dong-A Ilbo, June 21, 2020, https://www.donga.com/news/Society/article/all/20200621/101610805/1.
6. 6.  Government of the Republic of Korea, Flattening the Curve on COVID-19.
7. 7.  Alice H. Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (Oxford University Press, 1989); Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton University Press, 1995); and Eun Mee Kim, Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960–1990 (SUNY Press, 1997).
8. 8.  Brian J. Kim, “South Korea Has the Legal Infrastructure to Fight Pandemics; the U.S. Doesn’t,” Global Asia 15, no. 1 (March 2020), https://www.globalasia.org/v15no1/focus/south-korea-has-the-legal-infrastructure-to-fight-pandemics%3B-the-us-doesnt_brian-j-kim.
9. 9.  Sangchul Park, Gina Jeehyun Choi, and Haksoo Ko, “Information Technology-Based Tracing Strategy in Response to COVID-19 in South Korea,” JAMA 323, no. 21 (2020): 2129–30, https://doi.org/0.1001/jama.2020.6602.
10. 10.  Jung Won Sonn, “Coronavirus: South Korea’s Success in Controlling Disease Is Due to Its Acceptance of Surveillance,” The Conversation, March 19, 2020, https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-south-koreas-success-in-controlling-disease-is-due-to-its-acceptance-of-surveillance-134068.
11. 11.  “Number of Installed Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) Cameras in Public Places in South Korea from 2008 to 2022,” Statista, May 2023, https://www.statista.com/statistics/651509/south-korea-cctv-cameras/.
12. 12.  “South Korea Launches Mandatory QR Code–Based Registration at Entertainment Facilities amid Pandemic,” Yonhap News, June 10, 2020, https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200610001454320.
13. 13.  Woori Chang, “More Afraid of Social Stigmatization Than the Disease,” Yonhap News, February 4, 2020, https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20200223047800004.
14. 14.  Those who came in contact with the infected had to self-quarantine for two weeks. Many local business owners had to temporarily close their shops, causing them to lose significant revenue.
15. 15.  “A Person with Covid-19 Has Visited the Itaewon Club,” Kookmin Ilbo, May 8, 2020, http://news.kmib.co.kr/article/view.asp?arcid=0014558245&code=61221111&cp=nv.
16. 16.  Jeong Sang-hyuk, “80% of People Approve of Electronic Bracelet for People in Coronavirus Quarantine,” Chosun Ilbo, April 9, 2020, https://www.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2020/04/09/2020040904260.html.
17. 17.  As of March 2022, there were no daily calls from a health care worker, and it was not necessary to provide updated information about my health via the self-quarantine app on my phone twice a day.
18. 18.  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Pantheon Books, 1977).
19. 19.  Nitsan Chorev, “The Virus and the Vessel, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance,” Socio-Economic Review 19, no. 4 (2021): 1497–151, https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwab037.