Korean Journal of Policy Studies

Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University

Korean J. Policy Stud. 2020; 35(3):169-190

pISSN: 1225-5017, eISSN: 2765-2807

Article

Interim Evaluation of South Korea’s Response to COVID-19 and Preparation for a Post-COVID-19 World in Public Health

Youngmee Jee¹

¹Youngmee Jee is a special advisor to the prime minister of health, a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Public Administration at Seoul National University, a special representative for health diplomacy at the Korea Foundation, and a member of the WHO Emergency Committee on COVID-19.

© Copyright 2020 Graduate School of Public Administration, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Aug 18, 2020; Revised: Aug 18, 2020; Revised: Oct 27, 2020; Accepted: Oct 29, 2020

Published Online: Dec 31, 2020

Abstract

The aims of this study are to describe the key success factors of South Korea’s response to COVID-19 and to prepare for the post-COVID-19 world in public health. The MERS-CoV outbreak in 2015 provided the country with opportunities to enhance its national public health capacity in responding to emerging diseases, particularly in the areas of governance, testing, and tracing strategies, public-private partnership, risk communication, and the legal system supporting the government’s actions. This newly established system played a key role in South Korea’s relatively successful response to COVID-19. In this study, I evaluate that response and propose public health policies with a view to preparing for the post- COVID-19 world.

Keywords: COVID-19; public health policies; governance; public-private partnership