The Media Spectacle of a Techno-City: COVID-19 and the South Korean Experience of the State of Emergency

This essay provides a critical observation of the South Korean government's distinctive management of COVID-19 with particular reference to the state of emergency. It reveals that the success of South Korea's handling of the pandemic is largely attributed by a majority of Western media to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Asian studies Vol. 79; no. 3; pp. 589 - 598
Main Author: Kang, Jaeho
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.08.2020
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects:
Asian studies
British & Irish literature
Collectivism
Communications technology
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Culture
Democracy
Deployment
Disease transmission
English literature
Epidemics
Forum—The Pandemic: Perspectives on Asia
Forum—The Pandemic: s on Asia
Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963)
Information technology
Mass media
Nightclubs
Normality
Orientalism
Pandemics
Public administration
Public health
Society
Success
Surveillance
Totalitarianism
Western society
South Korea
COVID-19
Orientalism
datafication
surveillance
media spectacle
state of emergency
ISSN:0021-9118, 1752-0401
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This essay provides a critical observation of the South Korean government's distinctive management of COVID-19 with particular reference to the state of emergency. It reveals that the success of South Korea's handling of the pandemic is largely attributed by a majority of Western media to the efficient deployment of both information and communication technologies and Confucian collectivism, two components that seem contradictory yet not incompatible under the rubric of techno-Orientalism. Analyzing the intensification of surveillance and the rapid datafication of society, this essay argues that the current state of emergency is not a breakdown of normality but a continuation of the state of crisis and disaster that rules a developing country like South Korea. In doing so, the essay seeks to facilitate a critical discussion about a new mode of democracy in the era of pandemic that increasingly grapples with tensions between individual freedom and public health.
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ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911820002302