south korea case study

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Int J Environ Res Public Health

Understanding South Korea’s Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak: A Real-Time Analysis

Eunsun jeong.

1 Institute of Global Health, University of Geneva, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

Munire Hagose

Hyungul jung.

2 Department of Cancer Control and Policy (DCCP), Graduate School of Cancer Science and Policy, National Cancer Centre (NCC), Goyang 10408, Korea; rk.er.ccn@iknarom

Antoine Flahault

3 Institute of Global Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland; [email protected]

This case study focuses on the epidemiological situation of the COVID-19 outbreak, its impacts and the measures South Korea undertook during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the first case was confirmed on 20 January 2020, South Korea has been actively experiencing the COVID-19 outbreak. In the early stage of the pandemic, South Korea was one of the most-affected countries because of a large outbreak related to meetings of a religious movement, namely the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, in a city called Daegu and North Gyeongsang province. However, South Korea was held as a model for many other countries as it appeared to slow the spread of the outbreak with distinctive approaches and interventions. First of all, with drastic and early intervention strategies it conducted massive tracing and testing in a combination of case isolation. These measures were underpinned by transparent risk communication, civil society mobilization, improvement of accessibility and affordability of the treatment and test, the consistent public message on the potential benefit of wearing a mask, and innovation. Innovative measures include the mobile case-tracing application, mobile self-quarantine safety protection application, mobile self-diagnosis application, and drive-thru screening centres. Meanwhile, the epidemic has brought enormous impacts on society economically and socially. Given its relationship with China, where the outbreak originated, the economic impact in South Korea was predicted to be intense and it was already observed since February due to a decline in exports. The pandemic and measures undertaken by the government also have resulted in social conflicts and debates, human-right concerns, and political tension. Moreover, it was believed that the outbreak of COVID-19 and the governmental responses towards it has brought a huge impact on the general election in April. Despite of the large outbreak in late February, the Korean government has flattened the COVID-19 curve successfully and the downward trend in the number of new cases remained continuously as of 30 April. The most distinctive feature of South Korea’s responses is that South Korea conducted proactive case finding, contacts tracing, and isolations of cases instead of taking traditional measures of the containment of the epidemic such as boarder closures and lockdowns.

1. Introduction

A novel coronavirus, namely COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) has emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019. A few weeks later, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the outbreak of a new virus. As the epidemic has spread across the world at an unprecedented rate, the WHO declared, on the 31st of January 2020, the 2019 novel coronavirus as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern [ 1 ]. Neighbouring countries to China such as Thailand and South Korea were the first countries to report cases before the virus started to spread worldwide. South Korea declared its first case on the 20th of January 2020 [ 2 ]. As the number of cases has rapidly soared due to the large outbreak related to religious meetings of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus [ 3 ], it became the second-most affected country in the world after China in late February. However, as the Republic of Korea combated the epidemic actively by taking proactive measures to reduce the number of daily new cases, the country handled the spread of COVID-19 impressively as soon as the first case was declared in its territory. As of April 23, it ranked 29th among the countries most affected by the virus, with 10,702 declared cases [ 4 ].

In 2015, South Korea was affected by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). It recorded 186 cases, including 38 fatalities. The 2015 MERS outbreak revealed the weakness of South Korea’s healthcare system to tackle emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Since then, the Republic of Korea has made a change in the systems and policies to be capable of tackling the epidemics successfully [ 5 ]. As soon as the COVID-19 outbreak was announced in South Korea, a series of policies and interventions to contain the dissemination of the coronavirus disease were adopted, promptly and effectively. Research to develop a test kit was launched in mid-January, right after the Chinese government shared the genetic sequences of the virus [ 6 ]. Thus, when cases were rising up due to community transmission, it has already been able to detect and trace infected people and isolate them swiftly. South Korea remarkably controlled and flattened its curve without any national lockdown, even in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province where most cases occurred [ 7 ]. All these reasons put South Korea as an interesting, but also important, country to analyse and discuss in order to have a clearer comprehension of the measures undertaken as there is no harmonized and coordinated measures worldwide. Scrutinizing how each country has responded to COVID-19 and its consequences may broaden our insights into the COVID-19 pandemic. The present case study will, first, identify the evolution of the outbreak in South Korea. Thereafter, non-pharmaceutical intervention measures undertaken, economic, political, and social impacts, and mathematical prediction will be discussed.

2. Methodology

We conducted the case study by analysing the early responses of South Korea to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a real-time analysis of the situation regarding the Covid-19 epidemic in South Korea as it was conducted during the ongoing pandemic. At the initial phase of the pandemic, the sources of data were limited and there were few peer-reviewed scientific researches available. Therefore, we utilized data from governmental websites such as Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare, governmental reports, WHO publications, scientific articles, and conventional media. The study highlights and analyses responses of the South Korean government through the scientific knowledge and resources we had in April 2020. Based on data provided by the Korean government, Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the COVID tracking project, we were able to draw various figures by Microsoft Excel. In addition, the schematic diagram was developed to illustrate the non-pharmaceutical intervention measures. As this case study focuses on the first of the COVID-19 pandemic, all the epidemiological data presented are dated between January and April 2020.

3. Findings

3.1. case presentation, 3.1.1. general description.

South Korea is an East Asian country with 51 million inhabitants and half of the population is concentrated in the capital Seoul and its metropolitan area. The density of the population is estimated to be around 503 people per square kilometres, while the density of Seoul is approximately 17,000 people per square kilometres. The median age of the population is 42 years and the proportion of people older than 65 years is 15.5%. The life expectancy of the population is around 83 years. The country has a land border with North Korea and is surrounded by the Yellow Sea and the East Sea that are situated between South Korea and China and South Korea and Japan respectively [ 8 ]. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), South Korea is a wealthy and developed country with access to high technologies. The country is considered as the 11th largest economy in the world [ 9 ]. Regarding the country’s economic system, the Republic of Korea relies mainly on a strategy of exporting goods. The top export partner is China, its neighbouring country [ 8 ]. The climate of South Korea is temperate with four distinct seasons. The annual mean temperature ranges from 10 °C to 16 °C. The coldest month is January, with a mean temperature ranges from −6 °C to 7 °C, while the warmest month is August, with a mean temperature range from 23 °C to 27 °C. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus in South Korea happened in winter, which is a cold and dry season [ 10 ]. Concerning the political aspect, South Korea is a democracy with a president, Moon Jae-In since May 2017. Moon Jae-In is from the Democratic Party of Korea, which is known as a centre-left party. The country has a unicameral parliament composed of 300 members elected for four years. Currently, the Democratic Party of Korea, the president’s party, is the most represented in the National Assembly [ 11 ].

3.1.2. Healthcare System

Overall, South Korea’s health care system is described as being one of the greatest. The government expenditure for the health system was about 7.6% of its GDP in 2017 [ 12 ]. According to Bloomberg’s official ranking, South Korea has the fifth most efficient health care system in the world [ 13 ]. In addition, South Korea is the fifth-highest country with Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds per capita and it has 10.6 beds per 100,000 inhabitants [ 14 ]. It was reported that it had 12.6 hospital beds per 1000 inhabitants in 2018, ranked second among OECD countries [ 9 ]. As the Republic of Korea is a member state of the International Health Regulations (IHR), in 2017, the joint external evaluation mission took place in order to assess its preparedness for a public health emergency. The mission concluded that “the Republic of Korea has highly sophisticated systems and capacities in place to address emerging and re-emerging infectious disease threats and public health emergencies” [ 15 ] (p. 1).

South Korea achieved universal health coverage for its population in 1989. In 2000, the National Health Insurance (NHI) was introduced as the only insurance of the country with a uniform contribution schedule and benefits coverage for the citizens [ 16 ]. However, one of the major issues of the public health system is that “health-care delivery relies heavily on private providers” [ 16 ]. As a result of providers’ behaviour seeking profit, there is an increase in demand for new services and technologies that are not included in the NHI benefit package and it is one of the main reasons for the high level of Out-of-Pocket payments [ 16 ]. It was also pointed out the public health sector is poor both in terms of quantity and quality. There are insufficient public health facilities and workforce, and a shortage of finance [ 17 ]. Moreover, an increase in the cost of healthcare and overuse of medical services have been major problems caused by not only aging and a rise in the number of patients suffering from chronic diseases but also the inefficient healthcare system [ 18 ]. Through the COVID-19 outbreak, South Korea has reconfirmed a perennial problem, the lack of health workforce in general. The army doctors and nurses, volunteers, and public health doctors have been dispatched to affected areas to alleviate a shortage of medical personnel. Especially during the large outbreak in Daegu, 750 public health doctors were newly recruited and sent to serve in Daegu [ 19 ]. Public health doctors are male doctors who work in remote areas for three years instead of military service under a substitute military service system and they have been playing a significant role in the containment of the outbreak [ 20 ]. Meanwhile, South Korea’s government or the National Health Insurance cover all costs that arose from a diagnostic test to hospital admission for its population and foreigners, if it’s related to the coronavirus disease [ 21 ].

3.1.3. Epidemiological Situation of the Country Regarding COVID-19

The Republic of Korea declared its first confirmed case of COVID-19—a Chinese visitor who came from Wuhan—on 20 January 2020 [ 2 ]. Thereafter, the virus spread very slowly in the country with only a small number of new cases during the first few weeks of the outbreak. In mid-February, South Korea counted 28 cases in its territory, however, as of the 19 February 2020, the epidemic began to accelerate with a higher number of new cases every day. The main health authority for the COVID-19, the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), decided to raise the level of infectious disease alert to “red”, which is the highest level, on 23 February [ 22 ]. This action introduced more strengthened public health measures, for example, social distancing, mask-wearing campaigns and mass diagnostic tests to contain the virus and minimize local propagation in advance. However, the country quickly encountered huge unexpected outbreaks in the local areas. On the 29 February 2020, the country reached its peak of new cases in a single day, reporting 909 cases [ 23 ]. The dramatic increase in the number of cases was mainly derived from a large outbreak in Daegu, the fourth biggest city with 2.5 million people, and North Gyeongsang Province [ 24 ]. It was turned out that this large outbreak was associated with a fringe religious sect called Shincheonji Church of Jesus. The epidemiological investigation revealed that a massive propagation of the virus took place among worshipers during services [ 24 ]. However, the rapid increase in new cases had turned downward after the number of new cases peaked at 909 cases. As the number of new cases has rapidly dropped, the curve of confirmed cases has flattened [ 25 ]. Figure 1 illustrates the trend in new and cumulative numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths from late January to April [ 26 , 27 ]. As of 30 April 2020, South Korea has reported 10,765 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 247 deaths which occurred mostly among those over 60 years old (92%). 63.9% of the cases were found in Daegu, and the Shincheonji-related cluster outbreak accounted for 48.7% of total cases across the country [ 28 ]. In spite of spikes in the daily new cases from late February to early March, the number of deaths remained stable as seen in Figure 1 . In addition, the number of new cases has dropped to around 10 per day and as of 30 April it was reported that 9,059 patients have fully recovered that is 84.2% of the total cases [ 25 ].

The trend in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths in South Korea. Based on data from Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Statistic Korea under the Ministry of Strategy and Finance [ 26 , 27 ].

619,881 diagnostic tests have been conducted across the country ( Figure 2 ) until at the end of April [ 26 , 27 ]. However, it appeared that not only the total numbers of tests but also the early implementation matter. The importance of early reactive case detection becomes clear when we compare cumulative numbers of tests in South Korea and the United States as seen in Figure 3 [ 26 , 29 , 30 ]. Both countries have confirmed the first COVID-19 case on 20 and 21 January respectively [ 2 , 29 ]. While South Korea expanded case detection immediately, the United States increased the number of tests at late February where the number of confirmed cases was soaring exponentially [ 29 ]. Figure 4 shows sex- and age-disaggregated data on reported COVID-19 cases as of 30 April. The male to female ratio was confirmed approximately 4:6 (M:F) and young adults aged 20–29 was the age group with the highest rate of infection, which is 27.42% of total infections [ 25 ].

The trend in the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and cumulative tests conducted. Based on data from Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Statistic Korea under the Ministry of Strategy and Finance [ 26 , 27 ].

Cumulative numbers of test conducted in South Korea compared to the United States since the first case was confirmed both in their territories. Data retrieved from Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the COVID tracking project [ 26 , 29 , 30 ].

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases by sex and age groups as of 30 April. Data retrieved from Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention [ 25 ].

3.2. Management and Outcome

3.2.1. non-pharmaceutical intervention measures.

The non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are public health measures aiming at decreasing transmission by lowering contact rates [ 31 ]. As there is no vaccine available against COVID-19, South Korea has been implementing proactive and distinctive non-pharmaceutical interventions such as massive case finding and tracing, meticulous managing exposed or confirmed cases, and providing the public a consistent message to wear a mask and its potential benefit. The massive case finding and tracing could be possible thanks to its ability to produce test kits domestically when community transmission has started [ 32 ] and drive-through screening centres that boosted the country’s capacity in testing [ 33 ]. It was known that South Korea prepared itself to be capable of producing test kits in collaboration with the private sector at the early stage of the outbreak [ 32 ]. Moreover, the massive case finding and tracing have led to rigorous interventions to manage exposed and confirmed cases [ 34 ]. For instance, the government introduced the mobile application to monitor self-isolated patients and the Living treatment centres to isolate mild or asymptomatic patients. The rapid and innovative responses of the government were believed to be due to its experience of MERS in 2015 [ 32 ]. The experience of MERS has left lessons learnt and affected the way it is tackling the epidemic of COVID-19. The government was condemned for lack of transparent information to the public, which significantly contributed to the spread of the disease. It was claimed that many cases would have been saved by notifying contacts that they were exposed to the confirmed case and providing information on travel history of confirmed cases so that the public could avoid visiting affected places. Consequently, laws passed to allow authorities to trace infected individuals and disclose information on the cases to the public. Therefore, when the COVID-19 epidemic started, the country was able to set up the system for case tracing quickly [ 35 ]. Although it raised the concerns of human rights, the public information disclosed underpinned transparent risk communication during the COVID-19 outbreak. In addition, South Korea has been containing the outbreak remarkably without lockdowns or border closures while respecting the freedom of movement of populations and reducing the economic impact. To illustrate various measures and strategies other than well-known massive testing, we have developed the schematic diagram ( Figure 5 ) and the main features are further described in detail in below.

The schematic diagram illustrating interventions South Korea undertook to tackle COVID-19. It was developed to illustrate the non-pharmaceutical interventions of South Korea based on COVID-19 Patient treatment & management and quarantine system provided by Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare [ 34 , 36 ].

As it is illustrated in Figure 5 , South Korea took several measures for rigorous case isolations. Confirmed cases were hospitalized in the health facilities or the Living Treatment Centres based on the severity of illness [ 34 ]. The Living Treatment Centres, quarantine facilities, were introduced on 2 March 2020, to isolate confirmed cases not requiring hospitalization to minimize the community transmission while reducing the burden on the healthcare system [ 37 ]. To monitor patients efficiently in the centres without unnecessary contacts, medical personnel who were assigned to the Living Treatment Centres were using the Self-Quarantine Safety Protection Application through which patients input individual symptoms twice a day. It was also mandatory for those who were under self-quarantine to download this app or the Self-Diagnosis App [ 38 ].

Along with the case isolation and treatment, an epidemiologic survey was conducted in each case. The travel history of patients was traced thoroughly using data such as credit card usage, CCTV, and mobile GPS to conduct environmental disinfection and identify contacts [ 36 ]. The public information disclosed containing cases’ travel history, in turn, was utilized by companies or individuals to develop the mobile contact tracing apps [ 39 ]. The contacts identified had to be self-isolated under monitoring by local governments through the mobile application or phone. During self-quarantine, if a symptom was developed newly, it was directly notified to a public officer through this application. The mobile application was used not only to monitor symptoms but also to spot locations to know whether patients comply with the rule [ 38 ]. If those under self-quarantine were found at any place other than their home or a quarantine facility, they would face a fine or imprisonment [ 36 ].

The early detection and isolation of cases were underpinned by civil society mobilization, improvement in accessibility and affordability to the screening test and treatment, and prevention of the spread of the outbreak in communities and healthcare facilities. The government has mobilized civil society through risk communication emphasizing the importance of its role and advised people to apply public health measures such as hand washing and wearing a mask and keeping social distance while avoiding large gatherings. Especially, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has issued the guideline on the use of masks for the public. It recommended to wear a certified medical mask against COVID-19 from the early phase of the pandemic [ 40 ]. Moreover, it has provided the public with transparent information on the outbreak including information regarding confirmed cases through the Regular Briefing of Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters on COVID-19 and press conference, text message alerts, and applications [ 26 , 36 ].

Improvement in accessibility and affordability also played a key role. It was achieved by establishing a great number of screening centres such as drive-through centres [ 33 ] and 24 Hours call centres providing consultations and expanding the criteria of the diagnostic test to allow testing asymptomatic people. According to Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the costs of the treatment and tests of suspected or confirmed cases is covered fully by the National Health Insurance or the government [ 36 ].

With a massive case finding and testing, it also monitored the general population by surveillance of pneumonia patients in hospitals and temperature screening at places where people gather such as a train station, a shopping mall, a restaurant, and so on [ 36 ]. In order to reduce nosocomial infection of COVID-19, patients with any respiratory symptoms were treated separately in designated hospitals, which can be easily noticeable, so that it can prevent people from exposure to unidentified or confirmed cases. And through the national systems, the International Traveller Information System (ITS) and Drug Utilization Review (DUR), health care facilities were provided with critical information such as patients’ oversea travel history to major countries affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 and whether the patient was a worshiper of Shincheonji Church of Jesus so as to help doctors and nurses to diagnose and take precautions in advance [ 34 , 36 ].

In contrast with the stabilized epidemic in South Korea, European countries and the USA became the epicentres of the pandemic in April where the number of cases and deaths were soaring at terrifying speed [ 4 ]. As a result, there was an increase in cases among people arriving from overseas. The Korean government, therefore, decided to conduct the test and put all inbound travellers including Korean citizens arriving from Europe under self-isolation regardless of having symptoms from 1 April [ 36 ]. However, there was no travel bans since the emergence of the outbreak except foreigners arriving from Hubei Province, China since 4 February [ 41 ]. Also, schools and childcare centres were closed. A new semester was supposed to start on 2 March, but it was postponed a few times due to the persistent possibility of the spread of the disease among students and teachers. As the outbreak and absence of education were prolonged, schools including elementary, middle, and high schools, started opening online schools nationwide since 9 April [ 42 ]. Facilities with mass gatherings such as a church, a community child centre, a senior welfare centre were advised to close, however the government has not imposed a national lockdown [ 36 ].

3.2.2. Expected or Observed Impact on the Country Economy

This unprecedented situation the world is facing, had a significant impact on the national and international economy. China, where the epidemic of COVID-19 has started, plays a key role in travel and commodity markets and supply chains all over the world. Due to its significant role, the noteworthy economic impact of COVID-19 in China has been seen in other countries before it struck them. Also, as the outbreak was spreading, it was causing economic disruption worldwide [ 9 ]. The Korea Development Institute (KDI) revealed that in South Korea the production growth did not decrease in January when the few cases were detected [ 43 ]. However, the slowdown of exports appeared and domestic demand weakened in February as the COVID-19 outbreak was spread further. The exports have decreased due to not only a decline in demand from China but also disruption of the supply of immediate goods to produce commodities especially automobiles. In addition to deterioration in external factors, domestic demand decreased as a result of a deterioration in economic sentiment [ 43 ].

The OECD indicated that annual global GDP growth is expected to decrease by 0.5% in 2020 with negative growth in the first quarter possibly. However, the decline in global growth could be 1.5% relative to 2.9%, the rate expected before the outbreak, if it spreads worldwide resulting in a severe and longer-lasting outbreak. It was also mentioned that the economic adverse impact will be stronger in South Korea, Japan, and Australia which are highly interdependent [ 9 ].

3.2.3. Social and Political Disruption

The COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea has brought a variety of social impacts across the country. South Korea’s government came under political criticism for not blocking all arrivals from China amid the peak of the epidemic in China. As a result, more than 700,000 people have signed a petition for travel bans from all parts of China and the issue became a big political argument [ 44 ]. It has not only caused political debates but also affected the result of the election on 15 April 2020. As this particular situation happened just before the parliament’s election which occurs every four years, the management of the epidemic by President Moon Jae-in and the government has influenced the public vote [ 45 ]. Unlike criticism on the government earlier, voters applauded President Moon Jae-in and the government for successful responses to the coronavirus outbreak. As a result, the Democratic Party of Korea had a comfortable majority in the parliamentary elections, thanks in part to the management of the health crisis [ 45 ].

As the number of the COVID-19 case increased, South Korea was confronted with a lack of protective equipment, such as masks and hand sanitizers, due to insufficient supply, some domestic merchants’ hoarding and panic buying in the early period of the outbreak. Consequently, people have struggled to secure masks [ 46 ]. The government took action to control the supply and distribution of masks and imposed penalties on the hoarding of masks. The government started to manage the whole process of production, logistics, and distribution of masks in South Korea and even banned mask exports. For example, ‘the 5days rotation system’ has been implemented for mask distribution, through which people can buy two masks per week from pharmacies on designated days of week relying on their year of birth [ 47 ]. To monitor the purchase of a mask and distribute it equally, the protective mask was newly included in the Drug Utilization Review program or DUR, which is a national system to restrain patients from buying the same drug repeatedly. Consequently, “the 5 days rotation system” could be implemented successfully by facilitating the pre-existing system, the DUR [ 48 ].

After the massive COVID-19 epidemic was found in Daegu and Gyeongbuk areas, a wide range of thorough investigations were carried out by health authorities and revealed the connection between this outbreak and the Shincheonji religious movements. As a result, all those churches were forcibly closed by the authorities temporarily and even one local government accused them of ‘murder due to wilful negligence’. There was a petition for the Shincheonji church to be dismantled even if freedom of religion could be violated. Inversely, the church’s worshippers alleged that they have been persecuted and stigmatized by society because some of them were dismissed and excluded from their works merely because of their affiliation [ 49 ].

Lastly, in spite of its remarkable results, there were growing human-right concerns on intrusive case tracing and disclosure of private information of cases [ 35 ]. It was often said that information of cases disclosed might be identifiable. In turn, it could cause a violation of human rights and stigmatization. Also, as enormous and detailed information was provided by the government, people raised concern on consequent psychological effects. The authorities sent unceasing emergency text messages, alerting them to travel history of cases and the importance of personal hygiene and social distance. Therefore, it might cause various psychological effects such as anxiety, tiredness, and insensitivity due to exceedingly frequent alerts [ 35 ].

3.2.4. Mathematical Modelling Predictions

Mathematical modelling has significant roles in responding to infectious disease outbreaks and establishing prevention measures. It helps predict the size and duration of the outbreak or the effects of public health interventions even if accessible information is limited. Choi’s work regarding the COVID-19 mathematical modeling was performed right after the Shincheonji outbreak in Daegu, South Korea and it projected the virus’ propagation and the results of interventions during the first wave of the pandemic [ 50 ]. Her work illustrated the reproduction number ( R ) of the initial outbreak through the SEIHR model and served as mathematical modeling predictions according to its possible scenarios the reproduction number ( R ) refers to how many secondary individuals can be infected by a primary individual who is thought to be infected [ 51 ]. The estimation of reproduction number ( R ) is determined by the probability of transmission and the period of infection transmission. The SEIHR compartment consisting of Susceptible (S), Exposed (E), Infectious (I), Hospital-quarantined (H), and Recovered (R), was used. The model is illustrated in Figure 6 .

Flow diagram of SEIHR model for the COVID-19. Reproduced from [ 50 ], copyright 2020, the Korean Society of Epidemiology.

According to the study, the estimated reproduction numbers ( R ) ranged from 3.539 to 3.476 (based on the confirmed case from 29 February to 4 March 2020). Moreover, if no virus containment measures were introduced in Daegu and North Gyeongsang province (Gyeongbuk), the expected peak point would be 5 April 2020 and the infected number of cases would have reached 22,389 ( Figure 7 ).

Estimated reproductive number by date (29 February–4 March 2020) and their estimated numbers of cases if there were no containment measure in Daegu and North Gyeongsang province [ 50 ]. Reproduced from [ 50 ], copyright 2020, the Korean Society of Epidemiology.

Additionally, the study projects that the epidemic would have ended on June 28th, 2020 and total confirmed cases would have reached 4,992,000 [ 50 ]. On the other hand, if there were countermeasures to reduce infections, those would have led to decreasing the transmission rate and the infection transmission period alike, since early detection and case isolations are boosted by the measures. Figure 8 illustrates various curves on the base of the timing of containment and the reduced transmission rates according to given scenarios. (Scenario 1: the day of containment measures becomes effective—5 March, the transmission period—4 days, 90% reduced transmission rate, Scenario 2: the day of containment measures becomes effective—March 5th, the transmission period—4 days, 99% reduced transmission rate, Scenario 3: the day of containment measures becomes effective—5 March, the transmission period—2 days, 99% reduced transmission rate, Scenario 4: the day of containment measures becomes effective—29 February, the transmission period—4 days, 90% reduced transmission rate, Scenario 5: the day of containment measures becomes effective—29 February, the transmission period—2 days, 75% reduced transmission rate).

The predicted number of confirmed cases from February to March if there were proper containment measures according to mathematical modelling in Daegu and North Gyeongsang province [ 50 ]. Reproduced from [ 50 ], copyright 2020, the Korean Society of Epidemiology.

In another study, behavioural changes with regard to public health measures, such as social distancing, wearing masks, self-isolation and so on, can be factored in the mathematical modelling predictions. Particularly, those infection-prevention measures are crucial in containing the virus when there have not been proper vaccines or therapeutics developed yet. According to Kim’s study, Behavioural-change (S F ) and Hospital-quarantine (H) compartments are combined with the SEIR model [ 52 ]. The Behavioural-change compartment refers to a group of people who strives to avoid infection by those infection prevention intervention [ 53 ]. The model is comprised of Susceptible(S), Exposed(E), Behaviour-changed susceptible (S F ), Exposed (E), Infectious (I), Hospital-quarantined(H), and Recovered (R) as illustrated in Figure 9 .

Flow diagram of the behavioural change added SEIHR model for the COVID-19 [ 52 ]. Reproduced from [ 52 ], copyright 2020, the Korean Society of Epidemiology.

The increased number of cases and strengthening of public health measures drives the Susceptible (S) group of people to move to the Behavioural-changed susceptible (S F ) group. This could result in decreasing the probability of transmission in the Behavioural-changed susceptible (S F ) group. The study also deals with the outbreak of Daegu and North Gyeongsang province (Gyeongbuk) where there was a dramatic surge in the number of cases at the same period. The mathematical modelling predicts that approximately 13,800 cases would occur across the whole country and the last case would be confirmed on June 14th, 2020. Particularly in the Daegu and Gyeongbuk regions, the cases were expected to reach approximately 11,400 and would end on 27 May 2020 ( Figure 10 ) [ 52 ].

( A ) Predicted cumulative confirmed cases over time, ( B ) Predicted isolated cases over time [ 52 ]. Reproduced from [ 52 ], copyright 2020, the Korean Society of Epidemiology.

Both mathematical modelling predictions illustrate different results and patterns in association with pre-conditions and dynamics. Even though the government raised the highest level of infectious disease alert in the country and strict intervention policies have been implemented, it is necessary to find out whether those measures have been effective and maintainable as time has passed. Mathematical modelling is used as a useful tool in the decision making process in public health. Both mathematical modelling predictions commonly indicates the outbreaks in South Korea would continue at least until May, so the public health measures should be maintained.

4. Discussion

The WHO’s announcement of the coronavirus outbreak as the “pandemic” on 11 March 2020, followed the rapid spread of the virus around the world [ 54 ]. People were perplexed by the unprecedented propagation of a new viral disease and its huge impacts on public health as well as on multiple aspects of the global community. However, each country has been facing different circumstances as the responses to COVID-19 are immensely different among countries [ 55 ]. The findings in this case study, have shown how South Korea has responded to the COVID-19 with social, economic, political, and epidemiological impacts and it appeared to have impressive measures and results. As many other countries have been being criticized for poor outcomes regarding COVID-19, the Korean government had faced condemnation of the management of the MERS outbreak in 2015 that caused 186 cases and 38 deaths. Such experiences helped the government to establish improved strategies and measures against COVID-19. Consequently, it showed relatively better preparedness and outcomes than the rest of the world. South Korea encountered the epidemic earlier than other countries because of its geographic adjacency and international relationship with China. The first case was reported on 20 January 2020 and it did not take long to encounter community transmission which led to the peak of confirmed daily cases at 909 on 29 February. The new cases were mainly concentrated in Daegu and its surrounding Province, North Gyeongsang Province. The subsequent epidemiological investigation uncovered this large outbreak was associated with meetings of a fringe religious sect called Shincheonji. The Sincheonji-related outbreak accounted for nearly half (48.7%) of the total cases. As a result, South Korea was one of the most-affected countries with a high number of cases and deaths during the initial phase of the pandemic. However, South Korea has successfully flattened the curve of new cases after reaching the peak and the downward trend was maintained continuously. As of 30 April, the number of new cases per day were 4 and 84.2% of the confirmed cases were fully recovered. The number of confirmed cases and deaths were 10,765 and 247 respectively.

The Korean government has developed the plan and strategy to confront the outbreak of the new virus prior to its arrival. The government took the drastic and proactive intervention strategies including performing early and massive coronavirus tests, tracing contracts, and isolating cases instead of blocking the door completely against affected countries or putting the affected areas or whole population on lockdown. These strategies could be possible thanks to remarkable actions and innovation. For instance, since the government started the development of diagnostic test kits in collaboration with the private sector before having confirmed the first case in the country, it was able to produce test kits domestically at the early stage of the epidemic. Moreover, innovative ideas such as ‘drive-thru’ screening centres, the mobile Self-quarantine Safety Protection Application, the Living Treatment Centres were introduced. The drive thru screening centres gave an easy and safe way for both medical personnel and the public, thereby diagnostic tests could be conducted rapidly on a large scale. As of 30 April, the number of COVID-19 tests performed was 619,881. More importantly, Figure 3 shows the importance of early reactive case detection by comparison with the trend in tests conducted in the United States which reported the first COVID-19 case the day after South Korea confirmed its first.

As there has not been a single effective measure nor vaccine, the role of the public is also significantly important. Such importance of individual behaviours was taken into account the mathematical modelling. It cleared showed it significance in conjunction with tightened public health measures. Likewise, the Korean government emphasized the importance of the role of individual citizens and urged the public to abide by public health advices through effective risk communication. The government has provided the pubic with transparent information on the pandemic and the consistent message regarding wearing a mask and its effectiveness even when the World Health Organization stated that there was no sufficient evidence of effectiveness of masks and concluded not to recommend the use of masks against COVID-19 for the general population [ 56 ]. Moreover, the government actively intervened in the market to distribute enough masks to the people when there was a shortage of masks all over the country. Besides, South Korea improved affordability and accessibility of tests and treatment and undertook measures to prevent further community transmission such as continuous monitoring of the public and hospitals and designating hospitals where patients with a respiratory symptom were treated separately from the others ( Figure 5 ).

However, South Korea has confronted the problems of the healthcare system during the pandemic. It has the poor public health sector, heavily relying on private providers and there is insufficient health workforce in general. Therefore, the government has mobilized army doctors and nurses, voluntary medical personnel, and public health doctors to mitigate the shortage of medical personnel. Especially, the public health doctors who work in a remote area instead of military service, played a significant role when the large outbreak occurred in Daegu and North Gyeongbuk Province.

The COVID-19 pandemic and measures have brought enormous impacts on the country. Given its economic partnership with China, the economic disruption was already observed before it spread nationwide in South Korea due to the slowdown of exports and weakened domestic demand. It also caused social conflicts and political debates especially when the Shincheonji-related large outbreak occurred. However, as the government has flattened the curve of numbers of new cases rapidly, it has regained the trust of the people which affected the result of the general election in April 2020.

5. Conclusions

Although several characteristics of the virus were revealed in the early epidemic case studies in China, the information of the virus was not fully discovered or not open clearly to the global society at the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, responses of each country to COVID-19 were highly divergent due to lack of coordinated guidelines worldwide and it has resulted in different outcomes among countries. South Korea is one of the countries that have shown better outcomes in terms of COVID-19 than the rest of the world. The interventions and strategies undertaken by South Korea appeared to be effective. The most distinctive feature is the drastic and proactive strategy. Instead of implementing traditional measures of containment of infectious diseases, the Korean government put emphasis on proactive case finding, contact tracing, and rapid isolation of cases. Moreover, it was underpinned by remarkable measures such as risk communication, civil society mobilization, and innovation. The second feature is that the Korean government did not implement travel restrictions except for arrivals from Wuhan, China, respecting the IHR of WHO while the rest of the world closed their borders rapidly [ 57 ]. Given the situations of the outbreak in the countries where travel bans or border closures were applied promptly, the question on the effectiveness of travel restrictions is still raised.

The key findings highlight the importance of the proactive strategy and the responses of South Korea to COVID-19 provide broadened insights. However, a further research is needed in order to understand the association between each measure and the outcome and the extent of its effectiveness before applying them in other countries. Therefore, it is also important to develop methods to measure and quantify the effectiveness of these responses.

As the pandemic is still ongoing, there is a compelling need to accumulate the scientific evidence and evaluate the full extent of performances of South Korea on the COVID-19 pandemic and social, economic, and political impacts after the pandemic.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our special thanks to Sunhwa choi (Department of Cancer Control and Population Health at the National Cancer Center, Korea), Soyoung Kim and Eunok Jung (Department of Mathematics at Konkuk university, Korea) for providing us with figures and information on mathematical modelling. We also thank Antoine Flahault, Director of the Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva, and Liudmila Rozanova for providing their expert knowledge and continuous supervision throughout the writing process.

Author Contributions

E.J., M.H., and H.J. conducted literature review. E.J., M.H., and H.J. wrote the paper. E.J., M.H., and H.J. reviewed and edited several versions of the manuscript. E.J. developed figures. M.K. provided feedback. A.F. supervised. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Emerging COVID-19 success story: South Korea learned the lessons of MERS

South korea is one country which has responded well to the coronavirus pandemic. how did they do so in-country experts provide key insights..

This is a guest post by June-Ho Kim (i), Julia Ah-Reum An (i), SeungJu Jackie Oh (i), Juhwan Oh (ii), Jong-Koo Lee (ii) as part of the Exemplars in Global Health platform (see institutional affiliations 1 ).

This article was published earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic, based on the latest published data at that time.

We now source data on confirmed cases and deaths from the WHO. You can find the most up-to-date data for all countries in our Coronavirus Data Explorer .

Read the previous version of this article published 30 June 2020.

A previous version of this article covered the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea from January to June 2020.

Introduction

South Korea’s response to COVID-19 has been impressive. Building on its experience handling Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), South Korea was able to flatten the epidemic curve quickly without closing businesses, issuing stay-at-home orders, or implementing many of the stricter measures adopted by other high-income countries until late 2020. It achieved this success by developing clear guidelines for the public, conducting comprehensive testing and contact tracing, and supporting people in quarantine to make compliance easier. The country successfully managed outbreaks in March and August and gradually gained control of a larger, more dispersed outbreak in December 2020. Overall, South Korea has shown success across three phases of the epidemic preparedness and response framework: detection, containment, and treatment.

• Detect:  South Korea built innovative, high-capacity screening facilities and worked closely with the private sector to ensure an adequate supply of tests from the onset of the pandemic. The country maintains approximately 600 screening and testing centers and 150 diagnostic laboratories, with capacity reaching 110,000 tests as of November 2020.
• Contain:  South Korea isolated infected patients, increased compliance by supporting those in quarantine, and traced contacts with unusual thoroughness. Hundreds of epidemiological intelligence officers were deployed for these tracing efforts and empowered to use a wide variety of data sources, including credit card transactions and closed-circuit television footage.
• Treat:  The health system surged to meet demand, especially in Daegu, the site of a large cluster of infections in March 2020. An additional 2,400 health workers were recruited in Daegu alone. Across the country, the government restructured the hospital system, built temporary hospitals to increase capacity, and addressed shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) through centralized government purchasing.

South Korea’s strong enabling environment positioned the government to act quickly and effectively. After its flawed response to a MERS outbreak in 2015, the government made 48 reforms to boost public health emergency preparedness and response. In addition, a well-functioning national health insurance system, ample human resources and infrastructure, and constructive relationships between key institutions—such as the president’s office, the Ministries of Health, Education, and Foreign Affairs, and the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was renamed the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), during the pandemic—enabled an extraordinarily decisive response to the pandemic.

Country Overview

Since the 1960s, South Korea’s economy has grown at a remarkable pace, and it is currently the 12th largest in the world. 2 Health outcomes have improved alongside economic progress. South Korea put social health insurance in place in the 1970s, achieved universal health care coverage in 1989, and transitioned to a single-payer system in 2004. 3

South Korea’s health system is centered on hospital-based care. The number of hospital beds per capita, 12.3 beds per 1,000 population, is two times higher than the average in Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. 4 The country excels not only in hospital capacity but also in interactions with doctors, with an OECD-leading 16.6 consultations annually per capita. 5 Although some critics suggest that South Korea’s health system is overly dependent on secondary or tertiary facilities instead of primary facilities, this extra capacity enabled hospitals to respond quickly to COVID-19 without sacrificing care for non-COVID-19 patients. 6

Despite its robust health system, South Korea struggled to respond appropriately to the 2015 outbreak of MERS, which resulted in nearly 17,000 suspected cases and 38 deaths. During the six months of that outbreak, Koreans lived in fear, and the government lost an estimated US$2.6 billion in tourism revenue while spending almost US$1 billion on diagnosis, treatment, and other parts of its response. 6

After MERS, the country made a total of 48 reforms to improve pandemic preparedness and response, including more infection control staff and isolation units, expanded outbreak simulations and PPE training, and community-based collaboration between medical centers and local governments. 7 When COVID-19 struck, the painful memory of MERS inspired an early and aggressive government response—and a willingness among people to wear masks, cooperate with contract tracers, and otherwise listen to public health officials. For example, wearing a mask in public spaces, already common because of air pollution, became a social norm early in the pandemic. 8 A poll showed that more people adhered to public prevention protocols during the COVID-19 outbreak than during the MERS outbreak. 6

Outbreak Timeline

South Korea was one of the first countries to experience a COVID-19 outbreak, with its first case, imported from Wuhan, China, reported on January 20, 2020 (see Figure 1). The government activated the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters within days, and it has met daily since then, with the prime minister attending at least three times a week. 9

The number of confirmed cases ranged from zero to two per day for the first month of the outbreak, until a cluster was identified in Daegu, a city of about 2.5 million, starting at 15 cases on February 19. The cluster originated from the individual known as patient 31, who traveled around the cities of Daegu (including the Shincheonji Church of Jesus) and Seoul before her diagnosis. 10  Thereafter, daily confirmed cases rose rapidly and reached a peak of 909 on February 29.

After this peak, the number of new cases fell rapidly in the following two weeks until it hovered below 200 daily confirmed cases by March 12. Daily cases continued to decline steadily to nearly zero, although there was a minor resurgence in mid-May (about 30 cases per day) as the country started to reopen. 11

On May 6, the national mandates on social distancing were relaxed in favor of softer guidelines. Schools began holding in-person classes on May 20, which was relatively early. By June, only 20 countries had reopened schools—and 4 had never closed them down. 12 The return to in-person classes in South Korea was staggered by grade and completed by June 8, 2020, 9 with density restrictions (e.g., staggering days on which students attended in person) in areas of higher community transmission. 13 Studies conducted over the summer found that reopening schools had a limited impact on the development of new disease clusters. 14 In the semester starting September 2020, schools were given more autonomy over opening procedures and lighter capacity restraints, with guidelines set by the Ministry of Education based on the level of social distancing in effect. 12 Throughout the closure and reopening process, government support for childcare, internet, and technology was provided to families in need.

In mid-August, another spike in cases led to a peak average case count of 343.9 on August 28. 11 Like the Daegu outbreak, this outbreak was also linked to a religious group, the Sarang Jeil Church in Seoul. In response, Seoul reinstated its Level 2 restrictions (out of three levels), which includes limiting indoor gatherings to 50 people and outdoor gatherings to 100. It also collected the names of approximately 4,000 church members and tested about half of those, although contact tracing efforts were resisted by the church. 16 Level 2 restrictions were reinstated on August 23, and by September 20, daily cases had fallen below 100.

In September 2020, the Korean CDC, previously under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, transitioned to a stand-alone agency called the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), with increased staffing. KDCA releases daily reports that not only outline the raw numbers (e.g., cases, deaths, patients by severity), but also identify the location and case counts by different clusters and remaining health system capacity such as bed counts in intense care units. 9

Daily cases hovered around 100 in mid-November, when South Korea began to experience its third significant outbreak, with daily case counts that peaked at over 1,000 before decreasing in January 2021. 11

KDCA received viral specimens from China to begin developing diagnostic tools even before the first case was confirmed in South Korea. As soon as the first case was reported, South Korea turned its focus toward preparing for large-scale testing. Many biotechnology companies sprang up in the years between MERS and COVID-19, 17 enabling the development of public-private partnerships and scaled-up testing for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19.

On January 27, 2020, a week after the first COVID-19 case in South Korea, KDCA directed private companies to produce a diagnostic reagent. 18 Within two weeks of the first case, thousands of test kits were shipped daily, with the number reaching up to 100,000 kits per day in March. 19 By April 24, 118 institutions were able to run an average of 15,000 tests (and up to 20,000) per day. The number of institutions running tests continued to climb gradually, reaching 146 by August. 9 Subsequently, testing capacity increased 600 percent, reaching 110,000 per day by November 2020.

After testing capacity was expanded, the focus shifted to screening. To prevent infected people from entering hospitals, for example, COVID-19 screening clinics were set up outside entrances. Those flagged based on their symptoms or responses to screening questions were tested and told to return home and self-quarantine while they waited for results, whereas those who were considered low risk received a day entrance pass. Screening stations were set up in various strategic locations, including at Incheon International Airport. By September 22, there were 599 screening stations, including 48 drive-through centers. To encourage full testing among migrant worker communities, where several clusters emerged, the government announced that it no longer required health workers to report known undocumented residents. 9

During the surge of cases in Daegu in February 2020, health officials opened 600 screening centers using innovative approaches to increase capacity. 18 For example, drive-through testing centers collected three times as many samples as conventional ones, while removing the need for negative pressure rooms that prevented contaminated air from escaping into uncontaminated areas. 20 Meanwhile, phone booth–style stations enabled health care workers to evaluate and test people without coming into direct contact with them. First, workers stood outside negative pressure booths wearing PPE. Eventually, they shifted to positive pressure booths, which minimized the need for PPE and thereby prevented fatigue. 21  By late March, the country had performed over 300,000 tests, equal to a rate more than 40 times higher per capita than in the United States at that time.

Since March 15, the test positivity rate has been below 2 percent, and from April 6 to August 15, it was 1 percent or lower. During the second spike in August, the positivity rate peaked at 2.5 percent, and it reached 3.3 percent during the December surge, both well below the World Health Organization benchmark of 10 percent test positivity for adequate testing levels. 11

Travel Restrictions

In late January 2020, South Korea instituted special entry procedures for travelers coming from Wuhan. Procedures initially included designated entry lines and questionnaires and later expanded to include temperature checks, testing all travelers at the border, and mandatory quarantines monitored for 14 days. (Travelers without Korean residency are provided facilities for self-quarantine but must pay for the cost of their stay.) This policy of tracing and quarantining, rather than restricting entry, is in line with recommendations from the WHO, whereas border closures are not. 6

As case counts increased globally in the summer and fall of 2020, South Korea tightened travel restrictions and as of October 2020, requires visas for nearly all foreign nationals. It suspended visa-waiver countries and visa-free countries, with some exceptions (e.g., flight attendants). Visa applicants are required to submit forms about their health status and show symptom-free certification from a medical professional. Overall, visitors to South Korea decreased by 81 percent year-over-year. 9

Isolation and Quarantine

In the early months of the pandemic, the South Korean government transformed public facilities and retreat centers owned by private corporations into temporary isolation wards. It did this for two reasons: to care for COVID-19 patients while preventing transmission within households, and to relieve hospitals of bed shortages. Health care workers regularly monitored and quarantined clinically stable patients who did not require inpatient treatment. 8

In Daegu, the site of the first cluster, 15 community treatment centers, including several in dormitories for training institutes of private companies such as Samsung and LG, admitted 3,033 people between March 3 and March 26, 2020. Health professionals monitored the centers and patients reported their symptoms regularly by a smartphone application or by phone. The facilities were equipped with pulse oximeters, X-ray machines, and RT-PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2. Only 81 of 3,033 (2.67 percent) cases were transferred to a hospital for higher-level care. 22

South Korea’s quarantine policies are strict but supportive. People who have been in contact with a confirmed case, traveled internationally, or suspect they might be infected are required to self-quarantine. Those in quarantine are required to use the Self-Quarantine Safety Protection app for 14 days. Case officers monitor the app, including location tracking, to identify when people break quarantine. Violators are required to wear “safety bands,” electronic wristbands that connect to the app and alert case officers if they are not in the same location as their mobile devices. The fine for violating self-quarantine is heavy: US$8,217. 23

At the same time, case officers provide support to make quarantine easier. Twice daily they check in with those who are self-quarantining, to deliver food and toiletries and offer psychological counseling and video-streaming services for entertainment. 8

South Korea has maintained a focus on mental health throughout the pandemic, creating hotlines and recordings for those in isolation as early as January and maintaining a national psychological support team. 24

Contact Tracing

South Korea took an aggressive approach to contact tracing early in the outbreak. First, they scaled up their network of contact tracers. Second, they gave these workers access to data beyond what they might be able to learn from a typical patient interview. Third, they used public communications to empower citizens to assist the health system with contact tracing.

South Korea expanded its usual workforce of Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officers by quickly training staff at approximately 250 local public health centers, hiring 300 private epidemiologists, and leveraging staff at 11 nongovernmental organizations that train and support EIS officers. This multilevel approach was effective, with the veteran EIS officers conducting the more difficult investigations in large clusters, and health facilities and temporary staff handling smaller clusters including families. These efforts led to earlier case detection, kept the rate of new infections low, and potentially reduced estimated mortality rates by preventing hospital overcrowding and infections among high-risk populations. 6

The work of the EIS officers was further facilitated by legal changes following the 2015 MERS outbreak. When necessary, the officers were permitted to draw on four major types of information in addition to patient and doctor interviews:

• Facility visit records, including pharmacies and medical facilities
• Cellular GPS data from cell phones
• Credit card transaction logs
• Closed-circuit television

This information was combined with interviews and cross-checked with other data to trace contacts and take appropriate containment measures. 27 (see figure below)

On June 10, 2020, the country introduced an additional system called KI-Pass to help contact tracing efforts after outbreaks at several high-risk locations. The system introduces QR codes at high-traffic facilities like bars and gyms to replace manual sign-in sheets. 29 To respond to public worry about data use and privacy, the government instituted additional data protections, including automatically deleting data after 14 days. 9

South Korea encourages compliance with containment efforts by developing apps that collected relevant data, which eases the burden on EIS officers and made it possible for them to cope with the high volume of investigations. Patient trajectories are made public to enable citizens to track their own movements compared with those of suspected cases. Traveler information is shared with health facilities and pharmacies to facilitate prompt identification of cases and contacts. 30

Social Distancing

Korea has a three-tiered social distancing system with half levels (i.e., Level 1, Level 1.5, and so on through Level 3), as well as a “distancing in daily life” strategy, designed to be the most sustainable level of restriction. These levels are adjusted based on metrics including the number of cases and rate of change. 31

In May and June, after the first implementation of the “distancing in daily life” strategy, multiple outbreaks occurred in the Seoul area, with clusters from bars and warehouses. As a result, Seoul resumed more strict distancing guidelines until daily case counts were below ten. During the second spike in August, the entire country moved up to Level 2. These restrictions were eased in most of the country on October 12 32 but tightened again to Level 2 in November and Level 2.5 in Seoul in December as infections among asymptomatic young people increased.

Throughout the pandemic, information on proper mask-wearing and distancing was widely shared, and the government worked to find sources of misinformation. When misinformation was identified, the Korea Communications Standards Commission addressed the issue with cooperation from major websites like Google and Facebook. 29 In October, Korea amended its Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act to introduce mandatory mask-wearing, enforceable by fines of up to 100,000 Korean won (KRW), approximately US$90. 33

During a shortage of hospital beds in the epicenter of Daegu, health officials developed a triage system using a brief severity scoring system to classify patient illnesses as mild, moderate, severe, or critical. Mildly ill patients were sent to community treatment centers where they were closely monitored, moderately ill patients were sent to community hospitals, and severely or critically ill patients were hospitalized at tertiary hospitals equipped to provide intensive care. 8

Using portable negative pressure devices, the government was able to rapidly expand the supply of temporary airborne infection isolation rooms. In Daegu, officials created about 400 additional negative pressure beds during the crisis. 34

Daegu officials also recruited about 2,400 additional health care workers who were spread out among screening clinics, infectious disease hospitals, and community treatment centers. In addition, 327 physicians volunteered without pay to participate in the public health response, with 30 volunteering for the centralized COVID-19 response team and 260 volunteering for phone triage centers. 21

As with many cities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, Daegu faced a shortage of PPE, a critical issue that was escalated to the national government. Initially, the government limited the export of masks and penalized hoarding among retailers, but in mid-February, emergency measures doubled the production of masks in South Korea to an average of 10 million per day by March. 21

The government intervened in early March to purchase 80 percent of the mask supply from Korean manufacturers, fully ban exports, set a price limit on mask sales, and limit the number of masks sold weekly through retailers. Moreover, the government prioritized the distribution of masks to medical facilities. These interventions provided relief and averted further shortages, without forcing hospitals to issue policies about reusing PPE. 21 As the mask supply stabilized, the government relaxed sales limits to three masks in April and ten in June, and eliminated specific purchasing days. This policy was enforced by the development of a shared database that logged purchases across markets, post offices, and pharmacies. 29

After the Daegu surge, South Korea took a series of steps to manage capacity in the health system. The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure committee restructured the health care system to form six regional clusters (instead of 17 state and city jurisdictions) to make it easier to transfer patients between facilities and manage capacity. 29 Currently, a variation of the severity scoring system first used in Daegu is in use nationwide, with four different categories: asymptomatic, mild, moderate, or severe. Asymptomatic and mild cases are placed in one of five residential treatment centers instead of hospitals.

As of September 22, 2020, in addition to the 198 beds that compose the National Designated Isolation Unit, 43 hospitals with 4,075 hospital beds were designated Infectious Disease Hospitals and dedicated to COVID-19 treatment.Similarly, 323 hospitals were designated National Safe Hospitals for people seeking non-COVID-19 treatment. Each of these hospitals has separate areas for those with respiratory symptoms to be evaluated. 9

Health and Economic Impact

So far, disruptions of the health system have been limited. Given the relatively low incidence of COVID-19 and rapid control of major outbreaks through the fall season, hospitals were not overwhelmed. In addition, South Korea’s policy of designating COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 hospitals helped maintain the normal functioning of the health system for all needs.

Economically, South Korea is expected to be one of the better-performing countries in 2020. In August, the OECD projected that it would face the least economic impact, as measured by the percentage decrease in GDP for all 37 OECD member countries. 35 In October 2020, South Korea reported a growth of 1.9 percent from the previous quarter. Much of this growth has been driven by exports of memory chips for electronics and of automobiles to Europe and the United States.2

Part of the explanation for this success is that South Korea was able to avoid some of the severe long-term restrictions, such as lockdowns and business closures, that have led to troubled economies in many high-income countries. For example, after the government tightened restrictions in August because of the church outbreak and in late September because of a national holiday, it loosened them again in October. 36 In fact, the country never activated its highest level of restriction—which would have barred gatherings with more than ten people and closed gyms and other high-traffic businesses. 37

South Korea faced significant economic disruption, however, including large job losses. The government responded by providing subsidies to businesses for payroll and to unemployment insurance and low-interest loans to low-income job seekers. The government also lowered insurance premiums for social safety net programs for individuals and businesses. All households, regardless of income, received a disaster relief payment of KRW 400,000 (US$344) for single-person households, KRW 600,000 (US$516) for two-person households, KRW 800,000 (US$688) for three-person households, and KRW 1 million (US$859) for households with four or more members.

South Korea clearly stands out in the global COVID-19 response, with fewer than 80,000 cases and 1,500 deaths a full year after the first case was reported. The keys to the response have been clear, effective communication with the public about prevention best practices, aggressive and creative testing and contact tracing, and a strict quarantine policy accompanied by ample support that made it easier for patients to comply with the policy. This suite of tools has kept the disease burden low and enabled the government to manage a series of outbreaks while not unnecessarily harming the economy, which is performing better than that of most peer countries.

Despite its success, lessons from South Korea may not be relevant to all countries. South Korea, which is separated from China by North Korea, is effectively an island with respect to border travel and access. The population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent living in urban areas. 38 As a result, most cases in South Korea were clustered and often related to a small number of high-transmission events or locations, including megachurch services, other religious observances, a hobby sports group meeting, and workers in the tightly packed telecommunication center of a bank. Meticulous contact tracing may have been easier than in other settings where the disease spread through multiple smaller clusters and community transmission—as evidenced by the challenges South Korea faced in December when community spread occurred in small clusters.

Culturally and legally, South Korea is more tolerant of personal data-sharing, and its success has been heavily dependent on its ability to rapidly scale up technological solutions. Countries with less technology and where citizens do not have smartphones or are not as willing to share their data may experience difficulties adapting such strategies.

Despite these differences, many aspects of South Korea’s response are worthy of study, including its investments in preparedness, decisive and data-driven leadership, strategic clarity (a focus on testing and contact tracing), and willingness to be innovative. The data-driven agility that has led to South Korea’s success so far is being tested as cases continue to surge globally. Although the country’s case numbers are still much lower than those in many comparable countries, changes in the disease’s epidemiology—with asymptomatic young people seeding small clusters—require more innovation.

In-depth explainers on Exemplar countries

This framework identified three countries which provide key success stories in addressing the pandemic: South Korea, Vietnam and Germany. In these related articles, in-country experts provide key insights into how these countries achieved this.

How experts use data to identify emerging COVID-19 success stories

How can we define success stories in addressing COVID-19?

Emerging COVID-19 success story: Vietnam's commitment to containment

Emerging COVID-19 success story: Germany's strong enabling environment

This article is one of a series focused on identifying and understanding Exemplars in the response to the Coronavirus pandemic. It is hosted by the Exemplars in Global Health (EGH) platform.

Exemplars in Global Health is a coalition of experts, funders, and collaborators around the globe, supported by Gates Ventures and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who share the belief that rigorously understanding global health successes can help drive better resource allocation, policy, and implementation decisions. The Exemplars in Global Health platform was created to help decision-makers around the world quickly learn how countries have solved major health and human capital challenges.

Institutional affiliations:

(i) Ariadne Labs, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health & Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

(ii) Department of Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea

Seoul National University College of Medicine (SNUCM) and its training hospitals have an outstanding global reputation for excellence in medical research. About 1,000 principal investigators are devoted to providing the highest standard of medical treatment and research in all fields of medical science as well as the public contribution to improve global health care.

World Bank. GDP (current US$) [data set]. World Bank Data. Washington, DC: World Bank.  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true.  Accessed April 30, 2020.

Kwon S, Lee T, Kim C. Republic of Korea Health System Review . (Health Systems in Transition, Vol. 5, No. 4). Manila: World Health Organization, Regional Office for the Western Pacific; 2015. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/208215 . Accessed April 27, 2020.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Health equipment – hospital beds per capita, 2017, South Korea [data set]. OECD Data. Paris: OECD.  https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm.  Accessed May 31, 2020.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Doctors' consultations – yearly, total per capita, 2017, South Korea [data set]. OECD Data. Paris: OECD.  https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/doctors-consultations.htm.  Accessed May 26, 2020.

Oh J, Lee JK, Schwarz D, Ratcliffe HL, Markuns JF, Hirschhorn LR. National response to COVID-19 in the Republic of Korea and lessons learned for other countries. Health Syst Reform . 2020;6(1):e1753464.  https://doi.org/10.1080/23288604.2020.1753464.  Accessed April 21, 2020.

South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare. Measures to reform national infection prevention and control system for the purpose of immediate response to emerging infectious disease. Press release. September 1, 2015. https://www.mohw.go.kr/eng/nw/nw0101vw.jsp?PAR_MENU_ID=1007&MENU_ID=100701&page=1&CONT_SEQ=326060 . Accessed April 26, 2020.

An JA, Song KH, Kim ES, et al. Pandemic preparedness of an academic medical centre in the Republic of Korea. Clin Microbiol Infect . 2020;26(12):1595-1599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2020.08.032 . Accessed January 18, 2020.

Ariadne Labs. Global Learnings Evidence Brief: Protecting Health Care Workers in South Korea During the COVID-19 Pandemic . Boston: Ariadne Labs; 2020. https://covid19.ariadnelabs.org/global-learnings-south-korea . Accessed May 12, 2020.

Government of the Republic of Korea. All About Korea’s Response to COVID-19 . Seoul; Government of the Republic of Korea; 2020. https://www.mofa.go.kr/viewer/skin/doc.html?fn=20201021031300238.pdf&rs=/viewer/result/202101 . Accessed October 20, 2020.

Fleming S. South Korea's Foreign Minister explains how the country contained COVID-19. World Economic Forum Covid Action Platform . March 31, 2020.  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/south-korea-covid-19-containment-testing/.  Accessed May 11, 2020.

Roser M, Ritchie H, Ortiz-Ospina E, Hasell J. Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). Our World in Data website. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus . Accessed April 27, 2020.

Couzin-Frankel J, Vogel G, Weiland M. School openings across globe suggest ways to keep coronavirus at bay, despite outbreaks. Science. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/school-openings-across-globe-suggest-ways-keep-coronavirus-bay-despite-outbreaks . Accessed January 20, 2021.

Ministry of Education, Republic of Korea. Plans for second semester announced. Press release. July 31, 2020. http://english.moe.go.kr/boardCnts/view.do?boardID=265&boardSeq=82257&lev=0&searchType=null&statusYN=C&page=1&s=english&m=0301&opType=N . Accessed November 17, 2020.

Yoon Y, Kim KR, Park H, Kim S, Kim YJ. Stepwise School Opening and an Impact on the Epidemiology of COVID-19 in the Children. J Korean Med Sci . 2020;35(46):e414. http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e414 . Accessed November 17, 2020.

Government of the Republic of Korea. All About Korea’s Response to COVID-19. Seoul; Government of the Republic of Korea; 2020.

Kuhn A. South Korea faces new spike in COVID-19 after months of low infection rates. NPR . August 17, 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/08/17/903157458/south-korea-faces-new-spike-in-covid-19-after-months-of-low-infection-rates . Accessed November 16, 2020.

Zastrow M. How South Korea prevented a coronavirus disaster—and why the battle isn't over. National Geographic . May 12, 2020.  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/how-south-korea-prevented-coronavirus-disaster-why-battle-is-not-over/.  Accessed May 13, 2020.

Terhune C, Levine D, Jin, Lanhee Lee J. Special Report: How Korea trounced U.S. in race to test people for coronavirus. Reuters . March 18, 2020.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-testing-specialrep/special-report-how-korea-trounced-u-s-in-race-to-test-people-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2153BW.  Accessed April 27, 2020.

Fisher M, Sang-Hun C. How South Korea flattened the curve. New York Times . Published March 23, 2020. Updated April 10, 2020.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/world/asia/coronavirus-south-korea-flatten-curve.html.  Accessed April 27, 2020.

Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). “Drive Thru” COVID-19 Screening Center Standard Operating Model . Unofficial Translation by the COVID Translate Project (covidtranslate.org). KCDC; 2020.  https://covidtranslate.org/KCDC-drive-thru-manual.pdf.  Accessed May 12, 2020.

Kim SI, Lee JY. Walk-through screening center for COVID-19: an accessible and efficient screening system in a pandemic situation. J Korean Med Sci . 2020;35(15):e154.  https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e154.  Accessed May 11, 2020.

Kim J-H, An JA-R, Min P, Bitton A, Gawande AA. How South Korea responded to the Covid-19 outbreak in Daegu. NEJM Catal . 2020;1(4).  https://doi.org/10.1056/CAT.20.0159 . Accessed June 1, 2020.

Suzuki S. South Korea to adopt wristbands for quarantine violators. Nikkei Asia . April 20, 2020. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/South-Korea-to-adopt-wristbands-for-quarantine-violators2 . Accessed November 16, 2020.

Hyun J, You S, Sohn S, et al. Psychosocial support during the COVID-19 outbreak in Korea: activities of multidisciplinary mental health professionals. J Korean Med Sci . 2020;35(22):e211. https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2020.35.e211 . Accessed November 17, 2020.

NAVER Corp. Corona Map website. coronamap.site .

SeungCheol, Ohk. Tracking Strategy in Korea. April 2020. https://covidtranslate.org/tracking-strategy-in-korea.pdf .

COVID-19 National Emergency Response Center, Epidemiology & Case Management Team, Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Contact transmission of COVID-19 in South Korea: novel investigation techniques for tracing contacts. Osong Public Health Res Perspect . 2020;11(1):60‐63. http://doi.org/10.24171/j.phrp.2020.11.1.09.  Accessed May 11, 2020.

COVID-19 National Emergency Response Center, Epidemiology & Case Management Team, Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. Contact transmission of COVID-19 in South Korea: novel investigation techniques for tracing contacts. Osong Public Health and Research Perspectives. 2020;11(1):60‐63. http://doi.org/10.24171/j.phrp.2020.11.1.09 . Accessed May 11, 2020.

Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea. QR code based digital sign-in system, Much safer than manual sign-in sheets [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4DWtV9ObwQ . Published August 12, 2020. Accessed November 16, 2020.

Government of the Republic of Korea. Flattening the Curve on COVID-19: How Korea Responded to a Pandemic Using ICT .  http://overseas.mofa.go.kr/us-houston-en/brd/m_5573/view.do?seq=759765.  Published April 23, 2020. Accessed April 27, 2020.

Han E, Tan MMJ, Turk E, et al. Lessons learnt from easing COVID-19 restrictions: an analysis of countries and regions in Asia Pacific and Europe. Lancet . 2020;396(10261):1525-1534. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)32007-9 . Accessed January 18, 2021.

Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Updates on COVID-19 in Republic of Korea: change to social distancing level 1 (October 12). Press release. October 12, 2020. https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=&bid=0030&act=view&list_no=710836&nPage=8 . Accessed December 14 2020.

Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Updates on COVID-19 in Republic of Korea: mask wearing to become mandatory (11.13). Press release. November 13, 2020. http://cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30402000000&bid=0030 . Accessed November 17, 2020

Lee JK, Jeong HW. Rapid expansion of temporary, reliable airborne-infection isolation rooms with negative air machines for critical COVID-19 patients. Am J Infect Control . 2020;48(7):822-824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2020.04.022.  Accessed May 11, 2020.

O’Neill J. How South Korea became a model for dealing with COVID-19. World Economic Forum . August 24, 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/south-korea-covid19-government-pandemic-response/ . Accessed November 16, 2020.

Jeong EY. South Korean growth shows Asia’s stronger recovery from coronavirus. Wall Street Journal . October 27, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korean-economy-returns-to-growth-11603800971 . Accessed November 16, 2020.

Yoon D. South Korea, Facing Coronavirus Surge, Resists Tightest Restrictions. Wall Street Journal . August 26, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-korea-facing-coronavirus-surge-resists-tightest-restrictions-11598440860?mod=article_inline . Accessed November 16, 2020.

World Bank. Urban Population (% of total population) [data set]. World Bank Data. Washington, DC: World Bank.  https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS.  Accessed April 30, 2020.

Cite this work

Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. When citing this article, please also cite the underlying data sources. This article can be cited as:

BibTeX citation

Reuse this work freely

All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license . You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our documentation, so you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use and redistribution.

All of our charts can be embedded in any site.

Our World in Data is free and accessible for everyone.

Help us do this work by making a donation.

Cheonggyecheon Stream Restoration Project

Landscape performance benefits, environmental.

• Provides flood protection for up to a 200-year flood event and can sustain a flow rate of 118mm/hr.
• Increased overall biodiversity by 639% between the pre-restoration work in 2003 and the end of 2008 with the number of plant species increasing from 62 to 308, fish species from 4 to 25, bird species from 6 to 36, aquatic invertebrate species from 5 to 53, insect species from 15 to 192, mammals from 2 to 4, and amphibians from 4 to 8.
• Reduces the urban heat island effect with temperatures along the stream 3.3° to 5.9°C cooler than on a parallel road 4-7 blocks away. This results from the removal of the paved expressway, the cooling effect of the stream, increased vegetation, reduction in auto trips, and a 2.2-7.8% increase in wind speeds moving through the corridor.
• Reduced small-particle air pollution by 35% from 74 to 48 micrograms per cubic meter. Before the restoration, residents of the area were more than twice as likely to suffer from respiratory disease as those in other parts of the city.
• Contributed to 15.1% increase in bus ridership and 3.3% in subway ridership in Seoul between 2003 and the end of 2008.
• Attracts an average of 64,000 visitors daily. Of those, 1,408 are foreign tourists who contribute up to 2.1 billion won ($1.9 million USD) in visitor spending to the Seoul economy.
• Increased the price of land by 30-50% for properties within 50 meters of the restoration project. This is double the rate of property increases in other areas of Seoul.
• Increased number of businesses by 3.5% in Cheonggyecheon area during 2002-2003, which was double the rate of business growth in downtown Seoul; increased the number of working people in the Cheonggyecheon area by 0.8%, versus a decrease in downtown Seoul of 2.6%.

At a Glance

SeoAhn Total Landscape

Project Type

Park/Open space Stream restoration

Former Land Use

Transportation

Cheonggyecheon Stream Seoul , South Korea Map it

Climate Zone

Humid continental

~100 acres 3.6 miles (5.84 km) long

~$380 million USD - Total project; ~$120 million USD - Landscape portion

Completion Date

The City of Seoul is in the process of an important paradigm shift, changing from an autocentric development-oriented urban landscape to one that values the quality of life of its people and the importance of functioning ecosystems. By demolishing an elevated freeway and uncovering a section of the historic Cheonggyecheon Stream, the Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project created both ecological and recreational opportunities along a 3.6-mile corridor in the center of Seoul. The project has proven catalytic, spurring economic growth and development in an area of Seoul that had languished over the last several decades.

The aging elevated freeway and concrete deck covering the Cheonggyecheon stream posed safety risks and needed to be repaired or removed. The government wanted to improve connectivity between the city’s north and south sides, which the freeway divided. Transportation experts were concerned that removing the elevated highway would increase traffic congestion and chaos in the northern end of the city since it carried 169,000 vehicles per day. The idea of removing the freeway also met initial opposition from many local business owners. The proposed stream restoration also presented challenges. Water is not naturally present in the Cheonggyecheon for most of the year except during the summer rainy season, making it difficult to create a consistent urban amenity.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government chose to dismantle the elevated freeway and concrete deck covering the stream. To improve north-south linkages, 22 bridges – 12 pedestrian bridges and 10 for automobiles and pedestrians – were proposed to connect the two sides of the Cheonggyecheon. To reduce traffic congestion, car use was discouraged in the city center, rapid bus lines were added, and improved loading and unloading systems were implemented. To address business owners’ concerns, the Seoul Metropolitan Government held over 4,200 meetings to build consensus. Economic support was given to businesses and special agreements were made with vendors who had to move due to project construction. To address the variable flow of the Cheonggyecheon, water from the Han River and several subway pump stations is treated and pumped to create a consistent flow with an average depth of 40 centimeters in the Cheonggyecheon.

• The restoration created a 3.6-mile continuous east-west green corridor for pedestrians, bicyclists, and wildlife.
• Connectivity within the greater transportation network was improved by adding 22 bridges (12 pedestrian, 10 for automobiles and pedestrians), connections with 5 nearby subway lines, and 18 bus lines serving the neighborhood.
• The restoration reestablished connections between waterways. The Cheonggyecheon eventually runs into Jungraechon stream, which leads out into the Han River. The wetlands at their meeting point are designated as an ecological conservation area.
• Because water is only naturally present in the Cheonggyecheon during the summer rainy season, 120,000 tons of water from the Han River and several subway pump stations is is pumped and treated to create a consistent flow with an average depth of 40 centimeters in Cheonggyecheon.
• Native willow swamps, shallows and marshes were constructed in 29 different locations along the restoration, creating habitat for fish, amphibians, insects, and birds.
• A fish spawning ground was created where the Cheonggyecheon and Jungnangcheon meet.
• Terraced vertical walls give visitors access as water levels change, create seasonal interest as levels submerge and re-emerge, and provide flood protection for the city.
• Natural stones bridge the two banks, creating walkways for adventurous pedestrians and to helping regulate water speeds and levels and various points along the stream.
• Construction materials were salvaged and re-used from the concrete deck structure and elevated highway demolition. All of the scrap iron and 95% of waste concrete and asphalt was reused.

Had the Cheonggyecheon Expressway remained, it would have required 100 billion won ($90 million USD) and 3 years of repairs to secure the safety of the aging structure. While these costs would be approximately 289 billion won ($260 million USD) less than the cost of the Cheonggyecheon Stream Restoration, the restoration has served as a catalyst for an estimated 22 trillion won ($1.98 billion USD) worth of capital investment in Cheonggyecheon-area redevelopment that would not have otherwise been invested.

• Design solutions must consider the needs of all users from the initial planning and design phase. With the Cheonggyecheon restoration, the needs of certain user groups, including those with visual impairments and mobility challenges, were overlooked. After complaints culminated in a protest march, elevators were installed at seven locations, and free wheelchairs were provided for users with mobility problems. Because these design interventions were added later, they were more costly and are not fully integrated accessibility solutions.
• A Seoul Development Institute study included the following suggestions for how the restoration could improve its ecological performance: replace granite with vegetated low-flow revetment to increase habitat area, install spur dyke to deepen water and decrease velocity to improve fish habitat in certain areas, conserve variation in river bottom to support invertebrates, create alternate detour channels for fish to encourage migration, and create vegetated filter strips to reduce contaminants entering the stream from motorway runoff.

Project Team

Client: Seoul Metropolitan Government Main Designers: Cheongsuk Engineering (Section 1) Saman Engineering (Section 2) Dongmyung Engineering (Section 3) Landscape Architect: SeoAhn Total Landscape Main Contractors: Daelim (Section 1) LG Construction (Section 2) Hyundai Construction (Section 3) Independent Check Engineers: Suhyoung Engineering (Section 1) Cheil Engineering (Section 2) Cheongsuk Engineering (Section 3)

Role of the Landscape Architect

After the civil engineers oversaw the first phase of the project, the landscape architects and designers directly oversaw the second and third stages of the construction in an attempt to create a more seamless environment. This is atypical for Korean construction projects, with the landscape architects managing three different landscape design groups, the civil engineering team, the bridge design team, and the lighting design team.

Related Content from the Landscape Performance Series

Collections.

Case Study Briefs

Fast Fact Library

Stream daylighting can increase watershed-scale nitrogen retention. Nitrate travels on average 18 times farther downstream in buried streams...

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• Agrarian/Rural
• Animal Studies
• Archaeology
• Art and Architecture
• Asian American
• Borderlands
• Central Asia
• Citizenship and National Identity/Nationalism
• Comparative
• Demography/Family
• Digital Methods
• Diplomatic/International
• Economic/Business
• Environmental
• Ethnohistory
• Film Studies
• Food and Foodways
• Historiography/Historical Theory and Method
• Indian Ocean Studies
• Indigenous Studies (except the Americas)
• Intellectual
• Material Culture
• Memory Studies
• Middle East
• Migration/Immigration/Diaspora
• Peace and Conflict
• Popular Culture
• Postcolonial Studies
• Print Culture/History of the Book
• Race and Ethnicity
• Science and Technology
• Southeast Asia
• World/Global/Transnational
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

South korea’s economic development, 1948–1996.

• Michael J. Seth Michael J. Seth Department of History, James Madison University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.271
• Published online: 19 December 2017

At its independence in 1948, South Korea was an impoverished, predominately agricultural state, and most of the industry and electrical power was in North Korea. It faced a devastating war from 1950 to 1953, and an unpromising and slow recovery in the years that followed. Then, from 1961 to 1996, South Korea underwent a period of rapid economic development, during which it was transformed into a prosperous, industrial society. During these years, its economic growth rates were among the highest in the world. Under the military government of Park Chung Hee (Pak Chǒng-hǔi), which came to power in 1961, the state gave priority to economic development, focusing on a combination of state planning and private entrepreneurship. Possessing few natural resources, it depended on a low wage, educated, and disciplined labor force to produce goods for exports. As wages rose, economic development shifted from labor to capital-intensive industries. Focusing initially on textiles and footwear, South Korean manufacturing moved into steel, heavy equipment, ships, and petrochemicals in the 1970s, and electronics and automobiles in the 1980s. Two major reforms under the administration of Syngman Rhee (Yi Sǔng-man, 1948–1961) helped prepare the way: land reform and educational development. However, it was the commitment to rapid industrialization by the military governments of Park Chung Hee and his successor, Chun Doo Hwan (Chǒn Tu-hwan), that brought about the takeoff. Industrialization was characterized by a close pattern of cooperation between the state and large family-owned conglomerates known as chaebǒls . This close relationship continued after the transition to democracy, in the late 1980s and 1990s, but after 1987, labor emerged as a major political force, and rising wages gave further impetus to the development of more capital-intensive industry. In 1996, South Korea joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, being internationally recognized as a “developed state.” Although living standards still lagged behind those of North America, Western Europe, and Japan, the gap was significantly narrowed. After 1996, its economic development slowed but was still high enough to achieve a per capita income comparable to the countries of Western Europe and to shift from a borrower of to an innovator in technology.

• South Korea
• contemporary South Korea
• development
• Park Chung Hee
• industrialization
• modernization
• laboring (working) class

Economic Development from 1948 to 1961

At its creation in 1948 , South Korea ranked as one of the world’s poorest states. Twelve years later, in 1960 , it remained so with a per capita income about the same as Haiti. A number of factors contributed to that poverty. South Korea was predominantly an agricultural society, but it did undergo some industrialization during the Japanese colonial rule, from 1910 to 1945 , mostly in the northern provinces. The Japanese colonial administration created a professional civil service and an efficient, development-oriented state that worked closely with private business and banks to achieve economic targets. But it was a predatory, exploitative development designed to benefit Japan rather than Korea.

Korea was partitioned in 1945 by the Soviet Union and the United States, who then fostered the creation of two states: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south. The DPRK inherited most of the industry, most of the mining, and more than 80% of the electric power generation. The ROK possessed most of the productive agricultural areas, but these were barely adequate to feed the densely inhabited country’s rapidly growing population. South Korea faced additional challenges: the repatriation of the large population of resident Japanese after the liberation resulted in a loss of many skilled workers, professionals, and teachers; an influx of refugees from the North; the loss of Japan as its main market for its agricultural exports; and a turbulent political situation in the country. These problems were compounded by the highly destructive Korean War, 1950–1953 .

South Korea’s economic takeoff, its spurt of rapid industrialization and economic growth, began in the early 1960s under the direction of the military government. During nearly three decades of military-led governments, the economy was rapidly transformed in a process sometimes referred to as the South Korean “economic miracle” or the “miracle on the Han,” referring to the Han River that flows through Seoul. The years before 1961 , by contrast, are dismissed as a time of stagnation, inflation, corruption, and dependence on foreign assistance. In fact, the period from 1948 to 1960 is sometimes seen as an interregnum between the development-oriented colonial state that preceded it and the military government that followed it. 1 Real economic growth was only 4 percent a year, less than 2 percent per capita when the high birthrate is factored in. 2 This real but modest rate of growth meant that, in 1960 , the country was still extremely poor.

The years after the war, from 1953 to 1961 , saw only a slow recovery despite the country being one the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid per capita. There was a lack of central planning and only modest investment in infrastructure. Misallocation of aid funds, government corruption, an unrealistically high exchange, political volatility, and the threat of renewed war with North Korea all made the country unappealing to domestic and foreign investors. Fear of recreating colonial dependency on Japan prevented Seoul from opening the country to trade and investment with its booming next door neighbor. With few natural resources, the country produced little that the rest of the world wanted, and its international trade was miniscule.

South Korea followed an import substitution industrialization policy typical of many postcolonial states after World War II. This was less a carefully constructed strategy for economic development than a rather haphazard system of protecting consumer industries such as food processing, textiles, and items such as toothpaste and soap. The over-valued currency kept its potential exports uncompetitive. South Korea’s exports in this period consisted mainly of small amounts of tungsten, rice, seaweed, iron, and graphite. In 1956 , these amounted to $25 million against the import products amounting to $389 million, a huge deficit made up for by the infusion of U.S. aid funds. 3 Almost all of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings came from the U.S. aid. In fact, the country was heavily reliant on American assistance, not only for postwar reconstruction but for public finances. American aid accounted for nearly 80% of all government revenues and a substantial portion of South Korea’s entire gross national product (GNP). Foreign aid, along with the inflated exchange rate, was also used to support crony capitalism. The state under President Syngman Rhee had close ties to elements of the business community, but these were used as a means to finance the regime by channeling U.S. dollars into government coffers. The government gave out import licenses to favored businessmen to buy commodities. Since the official exchange rate of the hwan did not reflect any market reality, this meant that import licenses were highly profitable.

Nonetheless, some of the basic foundations were being laid out for the country’s later economic growth. As riddled with self-serving, corrupt officials as it was, the Rhee administration also had many able and talented people in the areas of economics, education, and finance. To these were added a steady stream of South Koreans who were going to the United States to study science, engineering, public administration, economics, education, and a variety of other fields. They often were employed as young technocrats by the government. In 1958 , the administration created the Economic Development Council, a body of these technocrats that began to draw up plans for long-term economic development. The Rhee administration, however, collapsed in 1960 , before they could be implemented.

More importantly, two fundamental changes took place in South Korean society before 1961 that contributed enormously to the country’s economic takeoff. One was the rapid expansion of education. From 1945 to 1960 , the enrollment in primary schools increased three times its size, secondary schools more than eight-fold, and higher education ten times. By 1960 , 96% of all children of primary school age were attending school. Additionally, state and private groups carried out highly successful adult literacy programs. As a result, South Korea, in 1961 , had the best-educated work force of any country with a comparable income level. The other major change was land reform, carried out in 1950 on the eve of the Korean War, which limited property holdings to 7.5 acres (3 hectares). In 1944 , 3 percent of landowners owned 64 percent, but in 1956 the top 6 percent owned only 18 percent; tenancy had virtually disappeared. 4 Traditional peasants became small entrepreneurial farmers, and many landowners invested in business or established schools. 5 Land reform brought stability to the countryside and redirected much of the capital and entrepreneurial energy of the old landlord class toward commerce, industry, and education.

Economic Take-Off

South Korea’s “economic miracle” began under the military government of General Park Chung Hee (Pak Chǒng-hǔi), who came to power in a coup in May 1961 . The previous year had seen the overthrow of President Rhee’s authoritarian regime in a student-led revolt and a rather chaotic experiment in parliamentary democracy under Chang Myun (Chang Myǒn). Under Chang Myun, the government drew up a long-term plan for economic development that partially served as the basis for the new military regime.

The new military regime of Park Chung Hee did not have clear ideas about what to do about the economy. What it did have was a determination to end the country’s poverty. Partly this was a matter of national pride and a desire to free the nation from its “mendicant” status as an economic ward of the United States. Park questioned whether South Korea could preserve its “self-respect as a sovereign nation, independent, free, and democratic” while being so dependent on the Americans, who financed a little over half the government’s budget. This meant, he remarked, that the United States had “a 52 percent majority vote with regard to Korea.” 6 Besides the desire to free their country from its economic dependency on America, the new military leaders were motivated by competition with a rapidly industrializing North Korea. It was clear that the country was falling behind North Korea, undermining Seoul’s claim as the legitimate government of all Koreans. Initially, the military leaders turned on the business community and its corrupt relationship between businessmen and the government. But after detaining and fining fifty-one prominent leaders, including Lee Byung Chull (Yi Pyŏng-ch’ŏl), the country’s richest, they began working closely with them to harness their entrepreneurial skills to the national effort at economic development. Park appointed thirteen to the Promotional Committee for Economic Reconstruction, with Lee as chair. 7 In this way. the military government began its partnership with the country’s entrepreneurial elite.

Several steps were taken to direct the state toward economic growth: the development of five-year economic plans, the redirection of the economy from import substitution to exported-oriented industrial development, and state control over credit. The Park regime created an Economic Planning Board (EPB) staffed by technocrats to direct economic growth. The EPB head served as a deputy prime minister, outranking all other cabinet members. The state nationalized all commercial banks and reorganized the banking system to give control over credit. 8 It then provided low interest loans to businesses according to the needs of economic plans. Most historians regard the First Five-Year Development Plan to be the point of economic take-off. Launched in 1962 , it called for a 7.1 percent economic growth rate for 1962–1966 , by encouraging the development of light industries for export. Despite skepticism by many American advisors that it was unrealistic, the target was exceeded with the economic growth rate averaging 8.9 percent, propelling South Korea on its path to rapid industrialization. Exports grew 29 percent a year, manufacturing 15 percent a year. 9 A Second Five-Year Plan, 1967–1971 , followed, which gave greater emphasis to attracting direct foreign investment and improving the basic infrastructure. 10

A major feature of South Korea’s economic development was its focus on acquiring technical skills. The state created a number of centers to promote research and the dissemination of technical knowledge to business enterprises such as Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), established in 1966 . It also promoted technical education by expanding the number of vocational secondary schools and two-year technical colleges, and encouraged students to study abroad, although many of these did not return. At the same time, the Park administration made impressive progress in professionalizing the state bureaucracy. Officials received appointment through a highly competitive civil service examination system and were promoted based on clear guidelines for merit. Attracted by good pay and benefits, job security, and enhanced prestige, many of the country’s top university graduates as well as those with overseas degrees entered the ranks of the bureaucracy. As a result, a highly competent, respected set of officials were able to help guide and promote economic and social development. 11

Since Park’s economic development policies were driven by economic nationalism and the desire to achieve autonomy for his country, he was concerned about avoiding foreign economic control. Consequently, he initially limited direct foreign investment into the country. Soon, however, on the advice of his economists, he began easing up on these restrictions. In 1966 , the Foreign Capital Inducement Act exempted foreign managers from income taxes, provided tax holidays, and streamlined the process for investing in the country. 12 Despite Park’s desire for autonomy, South Korean economic development was tied to the United States. Washington gradually began to reduce direct aid, but its technical assistance remained crucial to South Korea’s economic development. Perhaps most importantly, the United States absorbed the majority of the country’s exports. South Korea was also able to use political and military relations with the Americans for economic development purposes. Park sent 300,000 troops to support the Americans in Vietnam; in exchange, South Korean firms were to be given lucrative contracts to supply goods and services to the South Vietnamese, American, and allied military forces. South Korean firms such as Hyundai gained valuable experience in completing construction and transportation projects for the United States in Vietnam, experience that they applied to win contracts in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Japan was also important in South Korea’s economic development. Park normalized relations with Tokyo in 1965 , over the heated objections of Koreans who feared a return of Japanese dominance, if not a revival of colonial hegemony. Korean cheap labor and Japanese capital and technology were a good match. In the years after the treaty, Japan was a major foreign investor in South Korea, second only to the United States. In the decade after the treaty, trade between the two countries expanded more than ten times; Japan supplied nearly 60 percent of foreign technology between 1962 and 1979 . 13 The U.S. market and Japan’s investments and technology transfers greatly facilitated South Korea’s economic transformation. Japan was also a useful model for imitation. During the colonial period and after, Koreans learned much from Japan about what a non-Western country could do to successfully modernize and industrialize. As one Korean put it, the policy of his country’s business community was “Do what the Japanese have done, but do it cheaper and faster.” 14

In the 1970s, there were changes in the direction of economic development—a shift to heavy industry and the production of capital goods, accompanied by more restrictive policies on direct foreign investment. The change was motivated by a desire to become economically and politically autonomous. The United States started to appear less reliable as a military and political partner, as it established relations with the Peoples Republic of China in 1971–1972 and, as Americans began their withdrawal from Vietnam, President Nixon began calling for a reduction of U.S. forces in Korea. It now seemed to the leadership more urgent to make the country more economically self-reliant, able eventually to manufacture its own armaments and capital goods and to compete with North Korea’s own heavy industrial development. Self-reliance was reinforced in 1973 by new restrictions placed on direct foreign investment. The shift to these heavy and chemical industries required the government to play an even greater role in aiding and guiding industrial development. The companies favored by the Park regime were able to grow and expand, some into industrial giants.

The change in economic direction was accompanied by a more authoritarian turn by the Park regime. In 1963 , the country was returned to civilian rule, although in reality, the power was still in the hands of the military. Park was elected three times in semi-open presidential elections: 1963 , 1967 , and 1971 . Then, in 1972 , he declared martial law and promulgated a new constitution that gave him nearly dictatorial powers. Using these powers, Park redirected the economy toward the development of heavy and chemical industries inaugurating the HCI (heavy and chemical industry) phase of South Korea’s economic development. In 1973 , six industries were targeted: steel, chemical, metal, machine building, shipbuilding, and electronics. This stage of industrial development was concentrated in five small provincial cities, four of them in Park’s home area, Kyŏngsang, in the southeast part of the country: Yŏsu-Yŏchŏn, for petrochemicals; Ch’angwŏn, for machine-building; P’ohang, for steel; Okp’o, for shipbuilding; and the Kumi complex for electronics. 15

Despite the fact that many foreign experts believed South Korea was neither ready nor large enough to support a heavy industrial base, the plan was largely successful. The economy grew by double digits despite a less favorable international situation in the 1970s. In the decade from 1972 to 1982 , steel production increased fourteen times. The petrochemical industry did not become that competitive, but others such as steel, led by the state-owned Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO), did. POSCO operated the world’s largest steel-making complex, an efficient operation that successfully competed in the world steel markets. Shipbuilding was another success story: in the 1980s, South Korea became the world’s second largest shipbuilder, with a reputation for being able to complete orders for new ships quickly and on time. These successes were tempered somewhat by the fact that the energy-intensive industries were launched at a time of sharp increases in petroleum prices, in 1973–1974 . However, the outflow of foreign exchange to pay for more costly imported oil was soon compensated in part by the inflow of earnings from Korean construction companies and their workers in the Middle East. Thus South Korea weathered the economic crisis quite well. More serious problems were inflation, which reached an annual rate of 40 percent in late 1979 , and the country’s mounting foreign debt. The country has become a major borrower to finance not just new investments but also huge infrastructure projects, such as expanded power generation, telecommunications, port facilities, and roads.

Big Business and the State

The South Korean government, after 1961 , worked closely with selected business entrepreneurs to achieve development goals. These entrepreneurs created large family owned conglomerates known as chaebŏls . Eventually some grew to enormous size and came to dominate the economy. Under Park and his immediate successors, the state—through its ownership of the banks—poured credit into a few companies to develop industries targeted for development. The chaebŏls received exemptions from import duties on capital goods and special rates for utilities and the state-owned rail system. Firms engaged in enterprises not favored by the development plans found it difficult to gain access to credit: nor could they receive special discounts and exemptions. Each chaebŏl leader found it necessary to work closely with the government and contribute generously to pro-government political campaign coffers and to pet projects favored by regimes of Park and his successor Chun Doo Hwan.

A key to this alliance between big business and the state was the performance principle. The state constantly monitored chaebŏls to determine if they were using their support efficiently. They had to demonstrate their ability to produce results, that is, to efficiently meet economic targets and compete in the domestic and foreign marketplaces. When they were not performing well they lost state support. Thus performance in meeting economic targets, and not political connections, was the basis for preferential loans and other forms of state assistance. Another factor was that the government did not allow any chaebŏl to achieve a monopoly but rather encouraged competition among several in each industrial sector to keep them efficient. Corruption was generally not tolerated, at least the kind of behavior that reduced the efficiency of the firms. As a result, there was considerable fluctuation in the fortunes of the chaebol groups. Of the top 100 firms in 1965 , for example, only 22 were in the top 100 for ten years. And only 30 of the top 100 firms in 1975 were still in the top 100 in 1985 . 16 The successful chaebŏls expanded rapidly, with the top ten conglomerates growing at three and a half times the GDP growth rate. 17 As they grew, they tended to expand horizontally, branching out into a highly diversified range of activities, often far removed from their original core businesses.

Although most became publically traded, the chaebŏls were essentially family-run businesses. Family members held the top managerial positions with second tier offices staffed by those with school or hometown ties to them. 18 Control was kept in the family by low inheritance taxes and marriage networks. 19 Most were products of the post-liberation period. Of the fifty largest chaebŏls in 1983 , only ten predated 1945 . 20 A majority were established in the 1950s and 1960s. Most were well established by 1980 . Among those with colonial roots was Samsung, founded by Lee Byung Chull. Lee started out with a trading company in 1938 . In the 1950s, he established the Cheil Sugar Refinery and the Cheil Textile Company. He developed a close relationship with the Rhee regime, which provided him with profitable import licenses in return for contributions to Rhee’s Liberal Party. Initially targeted by Park Chung Hee for corruption and cronyism, he soon established an important working relationship with the new military government. Lee’s new Samsung (Three Stars) group acquired a reputation for being efficient and well managed. Involved in many areas, in the late 1960s, Lee made electronics his prime focus. By the early 1980s, Samsung was one the world’s largest manufacturers of TV sets. In the mid-1980s, it moved into the semiconductor business promoted by the government.

Ssangyoung (Twin Dragons) was another older chaebǒl , originating in the late colonial period as a textile manufacturer. Under Park, its owner Kim Sung Kon (Kim Sŏng-gŏn) branched out into many industries, including trading, construction, and automobiles, becoming one of the six largest chaebŏls in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of the chaebǒl founders emerged after 1945 . The most successful of these was Hyundai, founded by Chung Ju-yung (Chŏng Chu-yŏng), who started out with a construction company that worked for the U.S. Army and the Korean government. He came to the attention of the Park regime for his ability to complete tasks, such as a bridge over the Han River, ahead of schedule. After 1965 , Hyundai Construction received many contracts to build in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and in the Middle East in the 1970s. Chung established Hyundai Motors in 1967 to build the first South Korean car, which became known as the Pony. He established Hyundai Shipbuilding and Heavy Industries in 1973 in response to the HCI initiative. Later in the early 1980s, Hyundai entered the electronics industry and became in time the largest of the chaebǒls .

Another chaebǒl , Lucky-Goldstar was originally founded by Koo In-hwoi (Ku In-hoe) as Lucky Chemical Company in 1947 , the country’s major toothpaste manufacturer. 21 In the 1960s, he went into the electronics business under the Goldstar label. In 1995 , the Lucky-Goldstar company changed its name to LG, eventually becoming one of the world’s largest consumer electronics firms. Daewoo began in 1967 , as a trading company established by Kim Woo Jung (Kim U-jung). Having established a reputation for efficiency, Kim was given two failed enterprises—Shinjin, an unsuccessful automotive company, and the failing Okp’o shipyard—and managed to turn them into a major manufacturers of cars and ships. By the 1980s, South Korea’s economy was increasingly dominated by these largest of these family-owned conglomerates.

Social Transformation

As the economy grew, South Korea underwent a radical social transformation. This was most clearly seen in the rate of urbanization. Millions of Koreans left their rural homes to find work in the urban areas. Parents sent their kids to the cities to get a better education, and their children seldom returned. In 1960 , farmers made up 61 percent of the population. This fell dramatically to 51 percent in 1970 , and to 38 percent in 1980 . 22 By comparison to the cities, development in rural areas saw much slower growths. In fact, industrialization in the 1960s came partly at the expense of the countryside, whose development was visibly neglected. Farmers suffered from low prices for their crops, prices set by the state to keep food relatively cheap. Then, in part to shore up his rural base of political support, Park launched the New Village ( Saemaǔl ) Movement in the winter of 1971–1972 to promote rural development. Local governments were enlisted in programs to educate farmers to modernize their farms and their homes. Much of this was carried out in a heavy-handed manner. For example, he ordered all rural households to replace their thatched roofs with tiles, which were more fireproof and considered more modern. These were expensive, and the poor often had to settle for corrugated metal roofs painted blue or orange to simulate tiles. Village committees were established to formulate and carry out their own improvement schemes. Rural-urban income disparities, however, were closed only in the 1980s and 1990s, when the state increased the prices it paid for the agricultural produce in order to protect farmers from the imports. As urban incomes rose, workers could afford higher food costs. In general, by the 1990s, there was greater income and regional equality than in most developing and many developed countries.

South Korea’s swift economic development was accompanied by an equally swift decline in the birth rate. The Park regime’s technocrats generally accepted the argument by Western advisors that cutting the birthrate was essential for fast economic growth and modernization. Working with the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea, which was formed in 1961 by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the state sent family planning staff to local clinics. In 1968 , the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare created Mother’s Clubs for Family Planning and introduced oral contraceptives. A government program to recruit and train women in rural communities to instruct their neighbors in birth control proved effective. The state carried out major family planning campaigns in 1966 and in 1974 and began a female sterilization campaign in the 1980s. 23 By the early 1990s, the birth rate had fallen to replacement level and soon fell below that. While family planning efforts were probably important at first, the country’s shift to smaller families was characteristic of most societies as they became more urbanized and more middle class, and as women became better educated.

Educational development also proceeded rapidly throughout the period from 1961–1996 , with secondary education becoming close to universal in the late 1980s, and higher education enrollments reaching the levels of developed countries by the 1990s. Higher education enrollments, however, did not lead to a significantly higher percentage of labor participation by women who also entered the professional and managerial careers at much lower rates than that of most states at comparative levels of economic development. Health standards saw considerable improvement, with infant mortality rates matching those of most European countries by 1996 . Consumer growth was lower than the GDP growth. Lack of a social welfare safety net encouraged high rates of savings, as did the bonus system, in which workers received bonuses, usually set aside for savings, up to 400% of the monthly salary. Consumer desire was also constrained by state policies, such as keeping the prices of luxury goods extremely high and restricting foreign travel.

A Maturing Economy

On October 26, 1979 , President Park Chung Hee was assassinated. A period of political turmoil followed, compounded by the 1979 oil price hikes, a bad rice harvest, and an alarming 44 percent inflation rate, resulting in the economy contracting 6 percent in 1980 . But the economy quickly recovered. The 1980s saw high rates of GDP growth, peaking in the years 1986–1988 , at 12 percent annually the highest in the world. After that the growth rate slowed down, but the economy continued to expand through 1996 at an average rate of 7 percent. 24

Chun Doo Hwan, another military man who had served as president from 1980 to 1988 , continued Park’s developmental policies for the most part. However, as the South Korea economy matured in the 1980s and 1990s several major changes in the economy took place. Exports diversified and shifted to medium and high tech goods, with the industry becoming more capital and less labor intensive. Textiles exports declined in relative terms in the 1980s, replaced by consumer electronics, computers, and semi-conductors as lead exports. In 1983 , the first Hyundai cars were exported. By then, the country had become one of the largest shipbuilders and steel exporters in the world. Export markets also became more diversified, with less dependence on the United States. A serious problem was massive trade imbalances with the United States, still the biggest overseas market, which led to American pressure on the ROK to adopt a code of voluntary restraints on exports. Despite large trade surpluses with the United States, the South Korean economy continued to suffer from trade deficits as a whole. This was due partly to large imports of oil to fuel its heavy industry, although a drop in oil prices after 1982 helped somewhat. The ROK also suffered from huge trade deficits with Japan, which supplied Korean firms with capital equipment and industrial parts. South Korea, however, maintained its ability to work out technology transfer arrangements so that this dependency on imported technology diminished over time. Government-funded research centers such as the KIST, meanwhile, made impressive strides in promoting technological and scientific expertise. Gradually, the country expanded its trade with Southeast Asia, Europe, and, significantly, with China, after 1991 , when Seoul and Beijing opened trade offices in each other’s countries.

There was also a shift back in terms of attracting direct foreign investment and becoming less dependent on foreign borrowing. The country’s foreign debt rose from $2.2 billion in 1970 to $27.1 billion in 1980 . 25 It peaked at $47 billion in 1985 , but declined after that. 26 While the state reduced its foreign debt, however, corporate debt rose as the chaebŏls borrowed money to finance their expansion drive. To prevent overexpansion and needless duplication of investments the National Assembly passed a Chaebŏl Specialization Reform in 1993 . The top thirty chaebŏls had to list core industries that would be their focus. This, however, was not effectively implemented; the number of subsidiaries owned by the major chaebŏls actually increased by 10% between 1993 and 1996 . 27

From 1987 , economic development was impacted by democratization. That year the country held free and open elections for president, and the state lifted most political censorship, and many over of its controls over civil society ended or lessened. The administrations of the popularly elected presidents, former general Roh Tae Woo ( 1988–1993 ) and former opposition leader Kim Young Sam ( 1993–1998 ) did not possess recourse to the wide range of actions available to their predecessors. The era of strong-armed governments was over, and the economy had to contend with a newly empowered labor movement and a politically active middle class that now had a real input into policy-making processes. The years 1987 , 1988 , and 1989 saw widespread strikes and soaring membership in militant, non-government affiliated labor unions. Wages rose sharply in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in part due to the greater power of labor unions, the membership size of which increased approximately 15 percent a year. While benefitting millions of working class Koreans and increasing domestic purchasing power, wages from 1988 to 1996 rose much faster than productivity, threatening the competitiveness of Korean exports. Rising wages also contributed to inflation, leading to the appreciation of the won .

Democratization, likewise, brought about the end of some of the measures to control foreign exchange. For example, restrictions on foreign travel were ended in 1988 , resulting in a surge of overseas tourism by the new middle class. Importation of luxury foreign products increased. The state countered this by carrying out campaigns to avoid “excessive consumption,” in some cases threatening tax audits for those who bought goods such as luxury foreign cars. However, the overall rise of consumption in the 1990s was further aided by increasing pressure from the United States and the signatories of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs to open its markets. It also proved harder to discipline the larger chaebŏls that became “too big to fail”—their bankruptcies now risked damaging the national economy. There was also increasing concern among the public about the crony capitalism involving bureaucrats and politicians. Bribery, kickbacks, secret political funds, and bank accounts by officials and businessmen under false names were very much a part of the South Korean system. By the early 1990s, the pervasive corruption in business and government not only offended the moral sensibilities of the public but was also seen as a hindrance to the nation’s transition into a modern, First World country. A series of scandals in the mid-1990s, involving all nine of the leading chaebŏls and their connections with former presidents Chun and Roh, brought to light the depth of crony capitalism. Nonetheless, the same patterns of alliance among big business, the bureaucracy, and the ruling government persisted.

In 1996 , South Korea became a member of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a thirty-member group of developed nations. Symbolically, South Korea had graduated from a developing country to the ranks of the wealthy developed nations. But it still faced many economic problems. South Koreans still worked among the longest hours of workers among the OECD nations, and the quality of life had not reached the levels of developed countries. Many South Korean companies had over-extended themselves, staying afloat only with low-interest loans from the state-controlled banks. The size of corporate debt reached frightening proportions when, in 1997 , the Asian financial crisis hit the country, requiring an international rescue package. Newly elected President Kim Dae Jung carried out a number of needed reforms, forcing chaebǒls to reduce subsidiaries in order to concentrate on the core businesses and reduce their debt-equity ratios, and he carried out measures to liberalize the labor market. The effects were immediate, with a brief near double-digit growth rate during 1999–2000 , and South Korea moved from a debtor to a creditor nation in just a few years. Unfortunately, the speedy recovery reduced the urgency for further needed reforms. The economy continued to be dominated by huge conglomerates with enormous economic and political influence. South Korea entered a period of slower growth after 2000 , although it was still fairly high compared to most OECD members.

By 2017 , the Republic of Korea had a global reputation for technological innovation, its GDP per capita was slightly above the EU average, and it ranked among the highest in the world in health standards and educational attainment. Yet it faced many challenges. China, which by 2004 had replaced the United States as South Korea’s largest trading partner, was a profitable market, but it was also becoming a formidable competitor. Unemployment, once negligible, was rising among both university and non-university graduates. The country had become a major exporter of entertainment, but other sectors of the service economy were underdeveloped. Many South Koreans feared that the domination of the economy by a few huge chaebǒls such as Lotte and Samsung (the latter the world’s third largest publically traded company by sales volume) was stifling many smaller start-ups and having too much influence on public policy. With one of the lowest birthrates and longest-lived population, it was facing an aging population, a shrinking workforce, and an inadequate social safety net. The country began importing immigrants, but it was difficult for such a highly homogeneous society to accept the challenges of multiculturalism. And there were concerns about air and water pollution and other environmental costs of its economic development. These were mostly the problems of a mature, prosperous, technologically advanced country, for by the second decade of the 21st century , that is what South Korea had become.

Discussion of the Literature

The so-called South Korean “economic miracle” has attracted considerable attention from students of economic development. Much of the literature, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, focused on explaining the reasons for the country’s successful development and drawing lessons for other developing nations. Some scholars have viewed South Korea’s economic growth as a product of a unique set of historical circumstances. These include the timing of its development—when there were fewer export-led economies to compete with—the openness of the U.S. market, the proximity of Japan at a time when the Japanese were seeking to move production to low cost countries, the rivalry with North Korea for legitimacy and the need to compete with it, and the relative lack of ethnic and sectarian strife in this homogenous society. 28

Some scholars have pointed to the importance of U.S. aid, technical assistance, and the presence of U.S. troops to guarantee security and assure foreign investors. From 1946 to 1976 , the United States provided $12.6 billion in economic assistance: only Israel and South Vietnam received more on a per-capita basis. 29 Korean immigrants also played some role; they provided a link to the American wig business, to name one industry. 30 Some historical studies have placed a great deal on the importance of Japan, providing some of the foundations during colonial rule and serving as a model to emulate.

South Korea’s economic development has often been examined within the context of the general rise of the Pacific Rim of Asia after 1950 , and particularly as one of the “four tigers” along with Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. It has been argued that they were developmental states , a term coined by Chalmers Johnson for postwar Japan—states that gave overwhelming priority to economic development. Researchers have also seen South Korea along with most of the other miracle economies as possessing a strong state capable of overriding vested interests. 31 The general interpretation is that South Korea inherited a powerful centralized bureaucracy and national police from the Japanese colonial administration, and that the security-minded American military occupation and the subsequent Syngman Rhee regime made use of these instruments to suppress leftist dissent and maintain internal security. After 1961 , military rulers further centralized authority and directed the state toward economic development. The state then was able to achieve autarky and impose its will on society. This argument appears most valid for the 1960s and 1970s, when the military government was able to exercise discipline over the business class and suppress labor movements. Just how strong the South Korea state was and how important the role of business, labor, and other interest groups were in shaping policy has been a matter of discussion. 32

Some Korean and Western writers tend to refer to the so-called “Confucian ethos” that contributed to the economic success of South Korea, along with that of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. South Koreans came to attribute much of their success to these traditional values as well. By this, they mean hard work, discipline, respect for learning, frugality, and the importance of family, the emphasis on education, the high esteem in which civil servants were held that attracted talented technocrats to serve the state, and even to the willingness to delay gratification that resulted in the high savings rate that characterized the period of rapid economic growth. Yet, South Koreans possessed this “Confucian” heritage before 1961 , as did North Koreans. Many scholars found it necessary to look at specific development policies and historical contingencies to explain the economic transformation of South Korea, including the roles played by land reform, by educational development, and by the ways the country achieved technical transfers.

A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the social cost of economic development. The suppression of labor and political dissent, the authoritarian nature of the Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan regimes, and exploitation of cheap female labor have been cited among negative consequences of rapid economic development. Hundreds of thousand young women worked and lived in cramped company dormitories called “beehives,” for long hours and low wages. But by concentrating close together, often suffering from sexual assault by police, they often organized and resisted. In the 1970s and to the mid-1980s, women participated in labor unions and in labor strikes at a higher rate than male workers. The role of women in the labor force constitutes a burgeoning new field for scholars of Korean economy. 33 The labor force grew rapidly in the 1960s under Park’s drive for industrial development, but the workers were kept under tight restrictions. South Korea had a system of company unions relatively easy for large employers to control. Efforts to organize strikes were brutally repressed by the police. Corporate heads were quick to call upon riot police to break up demonstrations. They also employed thugs called kusadae (“save our company troops”) to beat up labor organizers, a practice that became common in the 1980s. 34 Working conditions were often appalling, with scant regard to safety and long hours. Working conditions began to improve in the 1980s and 1990s, and the workweek peaked at 54.5 hours in 1986 and was even into the 1990s the longest in the world. 35

A number of scholars have specifically examined the role of Park Chung Hee administration in promoting South Korean economic development. Some regard his authoritarian but disciplined and goal-oriented leadership as a key to the country’s economic take-off. Others have argued that he largely borrowed from the economic plans already drawn up by the democratically elected previous regime headed by Chang Myun, or that his heavy-handed policies were sometimes counter-productive. 36 Other scholarship has looked at the close cooperation between state and business, including the network of corruption that has plagued the country. The exact nature of the cooperation has been the subject of a number of studies. 37 Scholars continue to examine the concentration of the economy into a small number of family-owned and run chaebǒls .

Primary Sources

• Bank of Korea . Economic Statistics Yearbook ( Kyǒngje t’onggye yǒnbo ). Seoul: Bank of Korea. Published annually in Korean and English since 1960 with a great deal of statistical data.
• Korea Herald . Many articles and editorials on economic and social issues since 1953; tends to be pro-government.
• Korea Times . Contains many articles and editorials on economic and social issues in Korea since 1950; sometimes critical of government policies.
• Park, Chung Hee . The Country, The Revolution and I . Seoul, South Korea: Hollym Corporation, 1970. President Park Chung Hee’s justification for his rule. Worth reading for the insights it brings into the thinking and aims of his regime.
• Republic of Korea, Economic Planning Board . Economic Statistical Yearbook ( Kyǒngje t’onggye yǒn’gam ) Seoul, South Korea: Economic Planning Board. Published annually from 1961, contains statistics and other factual data in Korean and English.
• Republic of Korea, Korean Development Institute . Social Indicators in Korea . Seoul, South Korea: Korean Development Institute. Published annually since 1979 with many useful statistics on economic and social development.

Further Reading

• Amsden, Alice . Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization . New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• Brazinsky, Gregg . Nation Building in South Korea: Koreans, Americans, and the Making of Democracy . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
• Chang, Chan Sup , and Nahm Joo Chang . The Korean Managerial System . Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994.
• Chang, Kyung-sup . South Korea under Compressed Modernity: Familial Political Economy in Transition . Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2010.
• Eckert, Carter J. Offspring of Empire: The Koch’ang Kims and the Origins of Korean Capitalism . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.
• Eichengreen, Barry , Dwight Heald Perkins , and Kwanho Shin . From Miracle to Maturity: The Growth of the Korean Economy . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012.
• Heo, Uk , and Terrence Roehig . South Korea’s Rise: Economic Development, Power, and Foreign Relations . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
• Hundt, David . Korea’s Developmental Alliance: State, Capital, and the Politics of Rapid Development . London: Routledge, 2012.
• Kim, Byung-Kook Kim , Ezra Vogel , and Jorge I. Dominguez , eds., The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
• Kim, Choong Soon . The Culture of Korean Industry: An Ethnography of Poongsan Corporation . Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992.
• Kim, Eun Mee . Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960–1990 . Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
• Kim, Janice C. H. Kim . To Live to Work: Factory Women in Colonial Korea, 1910–1945 . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
• Kim, Linsu . Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea’s Technological Learning . Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997,
• Koo, Hagen . Korean Workers: The Culture and Pattern of Class Formation . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
• Lett, Denise P. In Pursuit of Status: The Making of South Korea’s “New” Urban Middle Class . Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University Press, 1998.
• Lew, Seok-Choon . The Korean Economic Development Path . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
• Lie, John . Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
• Nam, Hwasook Nam . Building Ships, Building a Nation: Korea’s Democratic Unionism under Park Chung Hee . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.
• Ogle, George E. South Korea: Dissent within the Economic Miracle . Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1990.
• Oh, Ingyu . Mafioso, Big Business, and the Financial Crisis: The State-Business Relations in South Korea and Japan . Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 1999.
• Park, Soon-won . Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Pirie, I. The Korean Developmental State: From Dirigisme to Neo-Liberalism , New York: Routledge, 2008.
• Sakong, Il . The Korean Economy: Six Decades of Growth and Development . Singapore: Cengage, 2010.
• Woo, Jung-en . Race to the Swift: State and Finance in the Industrialization of Korea . New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

1. David Hundt , Korea’s Developmental Alliance: State, Capital, and the Politics of Rapid Development (London: Routledge, 2012), 39.

2. Byoung-Lo Philo Kim , The Two Koreas in Development (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992), 66–67.

3. John Lie , Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 56.

4. Oh Seok Gon and Park Tae Gyun , “Suggestions for New Perspectives on the Land Reform in South Korea,” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 26.1 (2013): 1–23; and Cho Jae Hong , “Post-1945 Land Reforms and Their Consequences in South Korea” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1964).

5. Lie, Han Unbound , 9–18.

6. Chung Hee Park , The Country, The Revolution, and I (Seoul, Korea: Hollym, 1972), 28.

7. Hyung-A Kim , Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee: Rapid Industrialization, 1961–79 (London: Routledge, 2004), 87.

8. Jung-en Woo , Race to the Swift: State and Finance in the Industrialization of Korea (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1991), 84.

9. Eun Mee Kim , Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960–1990 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 105.

10. Lie, Han Unbound , 73.

11. Byung-Kook Kim , “The Leviathan: Economic Bureaucracy under Park,” in The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea , ed. Byung-Kook Kim , Ezra Vogel , and Jorge I. Dominguez (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 200–232.

12. Barry Eichengreen , Dwight H. Perkins , and Kwanho Shin . From Miracle to Maturity: The Growth of the Korean Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 235.

13. Stewart Peter Lone and Gavan McCormack , Korea since 1850 (Melbourne, Australia: Longman, 1994), 148.

14. T. W. Kang , Is Korea the Next Japan? Understanding the Structure, Strategy, and Tactics of America’s Next Competitor (New York: The Free Press, 1989), cited in Byoung-lo Philo Kim , Two Koreas in Development: A Comparative Study of Principles and Strategies of Capitalist and Communist Third World Development , (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992), 193.

15. Woo, Race to the Swift , 132.

16. Seok-Choon Lew , The Korean Economic Development Path (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 104–107.

17. Woo, Race to the Swift , 128–129; and Eun Mee Kim, Big Business, Strong State , 51.

18. Chan Sup Chang and Nahm Joo Chang , The Korean Managerial System (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994), 40.

19. Kyung-sup Chang , South Korea under Compressed Modernity: Familial Political Economy in Transition , (Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge, 2010), 122–124.

20. Eun Mee Kim, Big Business, Strong State , 114.

21. Chang and Chang, The Korean Managerial System , 40.

22. Philo Kim, Two Koreas in Development , 73.

23. Seungsook Moon , Militarized Modernity and Gendering Citizenship in South Korea (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 84–85.

24. Eichengreen, et al., From Miracle to Maturity , 44–45.

25. Linsu Kim, Imitation to Innovation , 32.

26. Lew, The Korean Economic Development Path , 144.

27. Young Whan Kihl , Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), 120.

28. Marcus Noland , “ Six Markets to Watch: South Korea: The Backwater that Boomed .” Foreign Affairs (January/February, 2014).

29. Woo, Race to the Swift , 45.

30. Lie, Han Unbound , 66–67.

31. See Alice Amsden , Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (London: Oxford University Press, 1989); Stephan Haggard and Chung-in Moon , “Institutions and Economic Policy: Theory and a Korean Case Study,” World Politics 17.2 (January 1990): 210–237; Chalmers Johnson , “Political Institutions and Economic Performance: The Government-Business Relationship in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan,” in The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism , ed. Frederic C. Deyo (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 136–164; and Edward S. Mason , et al., The Economic Social Modernization of the Republic of Korea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).

32. Michael J. Seth , “Strong State or Strong Society?” Korean Studies 21 (1997).

33. Jeong-Lim Nam , “Labor’s Control of the State and Women’s Resistance in the Export Sector of South Korea,” Social Problems 43.3 (1996), 327–338.

34. George E. Ogle , South Korea: Dissent within the Economic Miracle (London: Zed Books, 1990), 62.

35. Hagen Koo , Korean Workers: The Culture and Pattern of Class Formation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 48–49.

36. Hyung-A Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee ; and Byung-Kook Kim, Ezra Vogel, and Jorge I. Dominguez, ed. The Park Chung Hee Era .

37. See Ingyu Oh , Mafioso, Big Business, and the Financial Crisis: The State-Business Relations in South Korea and Japan (Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 1999); and Mark Clifford , Troubled Tiger: Businessmen, Bureaucrats, and Generals in South Korea (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994).

Related Articles

• Monetary History of East Asia
• Inter-State Water Disputes in South India

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Asian History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 04 September 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [185.194.105.172]
• 185.194.105.172

Character limit 500 /500

• AsianStudies.org
• Annual Conference
• EAA Articles
• 2025 Annual Conference March 13-16, 2025
• AAS Community Forum Log In and Participate

Education About Asia: Online Archives

Economic development: the case of south korea, stanford program on international and cross-cultural education (spice), 158 pages with cd, 2015, see http://tinyurl.com/jmyzs5u for more information., reviewed by joel r. campbell.

South Korea is a country that the world should know better. It is the third-largest economy of East Asia and the thirteenth-largest in the world. It is one of the Asian “miracle” economies that rose from poverty and the ashes of war to become an example of state-led, export-oriented economic development and industrialization from the 1960s to 1990s. Since then, it has become one of the most robustly high-techdriven economies, in which nearly everyone has access to broadband Internet and high-quality cellphone service. This SPICE unit is a relatively well-constructed, thoughtful unit on the political economy of South Korea. It should be useful in high school and first- or second-year general education survey courses such as world history, economics, human geography, and introductory courses on comparative politics and Asian studies. As is the case with all SPICE units, Economic Development: The Case of South Korea includes a comprehensive introduction for teachers, the provision of supplemental teacher information included at various places in the unit, and student opportunities to engage in a wide range of activities and assignments. The unit includes PowerPoints and supplementary video. Each of the lessons is simple to understand for students and easy to employ for instructors, and each lesson builds on what has come in previous lessons. Most lessons can be taught in two to four fifty-minute periods.

The unit is divided into four lessons. Lesson 1, “Setting the Context,” includes activities that introduce students to the Korean peninsula; Korea’s history, particularly since the division; and the postwar economic history of South Korea. In the latter part of the lesson, students learn about the concept of economic development and what makes economies grow. In lesson 2, which includes a video lecture by a Stanford economist, the focus is upon four economic “drivers” of ROK economic growth: exports, education, government policy, and jaebols (chaebols), or private conglomerates.

Lesson 3 arguably could be titled “Entertainment Industry” rather than “Hallyu Industry,” since Koreans do not use the term Hallyu to refer to the industry. Hallyu is, rather, a term referring to the phenomenon of Korean popular culture finding success in neighboring countries in recent years (often called the Hallyu Wave). Students explore the global popularity of Korean popular culture, including television series (K-dramas), music, computer games, and, more recently, food.

Lesson 4’s focus is upon the future, and through various activities including a class debate, students consider the aging of the Korean population, economic inequality, the question of the division of the peninsula, and the prospects of reunification.

Since most North American students know little about the ROK, this unit is a highly useful introductory educational tool, However, students with a special interest in the ROK and its rise should be encouraged to also learn about the drama of the ROK’s rise, both the Korean ascendance from being some of Asia’s poorest people to some of the continent’s most affluent populations, and the wrenching political and social changes they endured during this transformation. The most serious students’ educational experiences will be enhanced by learning the evocative stories of key persons or events in modern Korean history or business. These could include such key political leaders as Park Chung Hee and Kim Dae Jung, and such business leaders as Chung Joo Yung and Kim Woo Jong. Key events might include the coup d’etat of 1961, the downturn of the late 1970s, the shift to high-tech production in the 1980s, the popular revolution of 1987, and the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998. Comparisons of the ROK’s rise with that of the other “Little Tigers,” Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, will be of much benefit to gifted and interested students. The whole debate over the costs and benefits of the Capitalist Development State is another rich area of inquiry for students thirsting for more knowledge about the ROK.

Joel R. Campbell is an Associate Professor of Political Science in the Pacific Region (Japan and Korea) of the Global Campus program of Troy University. He teaches in the Masters of Science in International Relations (MSIR) program. He has taught at Tōhoku University, Miyazaki International College, and Kansai Gaidai University in Japan, as well as three universities in Korea. He has published extensively on his principal research interests, the politics and political economy of Northeast Asia, along with technology policy and international security. He can be reached at jrcampbell@troy.edu.

Share this:

• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Latest News
• Join or Renew
• Education About Asia
• Education About Asia Articles
• Asia Shorts Book Series
• Asia Past & Present
• Key Issues in Asian Studies
• Journal of Asian Studies
• The Bibliography of Asian Studies
• AAS-Gale Fellowship
• Council Grants
• Book Prizes
• Graduate Student Paper Prizes
• Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award
• The AAS First Book Subvention Program
• External Grants & Fellowships
• AAS Career Center
• Asian Studies Programs & Centers
• Study Abroad Programs
• Language Database
• Conferences & Events
• #AsiaNow Blog

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• NATURE INDEX
• 27 May 2020
• Correction 02 June 2020

How South Korea made itself a global innovation leader

• Leigh Dayton 0

Leigh Dayton is science and innovation writer based in Sydney, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

South Korea is a global leader in information and communication technologies. Credit: Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

South Korea’s position as one of the world’s most innovative nations is a remarkable achievement considering that, for the first half of the twentieth century, it was an agrarian-based Japanese colony, then a battle ground.

It is second only to Germany in Bloomberg’s 2020 Innovation Index, having reigned at the top of the 60-country list for the previous 5 years. In the separate 2019 Global Innovation Index, published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization, South Korea is at number 11 and Germany is in 9th place among the 129 countries ranked.

Both indices highlight South Korea’s outstanding performance in research and development (R&D) intensity, an indicator based on R&D investment by government and industry and the number of researchers working in and between both sectors. For example, South Korea had the greatest share of researchers who moved from industry to academia in 2017 to 2019 among 71 countries, data from academic recruitment firm, League of Scholars, show.

Top-down success

The high R&D intensity that helped South Korea become a global leader in information and communication technologies has emerged from a historically ‘top-down’ innovation system that promotes “close collaboration between government, industry, and the academic community in the process of nation building”, says Tim Mazzarol from the University of Western Australia in Perth, who specializes in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Nature Index 2020 South Korea

President Park Chung-hee drove South Korea’s economic development between 1961, when he took power in a military coup, until 1979, when he was assassinated. Park shifted the economy from its post-war dependence on technology imports and the construction of industrial facilities by foreign companies to focus on home-grown labour-intensive industries, such as clothing and textiles. Crucially, strong support for R&D was central to his first Five-Year Economic Development Plan in 1962 and manifest in his establishment of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in 1966, and the Ministry of Science and Technology the following year.

These instruments supported the emergence of large industrial groups called chaebols, which were owned and controlled by South Korean individuals or families. The government pushed the chaebols to invest heavily in R&D while shielding them from competition. With increased R&D intensity that focused on applied knowledge, chaebols such as LG, Lotte and Samsung were driven towards new heavy industries, including petrochemicals, car manufacturing and shipbuilding, as well as consumer electronics.

Sources: Nature Index; OECD Gross domestic spending on R&D (indicator) https://doi.org/10.1787/d8b068b4-en (Accessed 8 May 2020)

Samsung — the classic chaebol

Samsung is a case in point. The company that started life as a grocery trader in 1938 is now South Korea’s largest chaebol, operating in industries as diverse as electronics, insurance, construction and shipbuilding. In 2018, it produced roughly 15% of the nation’s gross domestic product.

Its founder, Lee Byung Chul, with help from government protectionist policies, expanded into textiles after the Korean War, electronics in the 1960s, then heavy industries, aerospace and computing during the 1970s and early 1980s. By the 1990s and 2000s, Samsung was a world leader in tablets and mobiles, and in the design and manufacture of computer chips. The company is South Korea’s leading corporate institution in the Nature Index by far, based on contributions to research articles published in the 82 high-quality natural science journals tracked by the Index. With a Share of 10.36 in 2019, it ranked 28th among the country’s institutions overall, eclipsing its nearest rival in the corporate ranks, LG, which had a Share of 1.99. Samsung also features in each of South Korea’s nine leading corporate-academic collaborative pairs in the Nature Index.

The most productive pairing is with Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, with 159 joint articles between 2015 and 2019. Their collaboration is particularly strong in electrochemistry and the development of new energy sources such as lithium-ion batteries ( J. K. Shon et al. Nature Commun . 7 , 11049; 2016 ). Other partnerships include Seoul National University in Seoul, (41 articles) and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon (35 articles).

Samsung’s top ten

Samsung Group’s top ten collaborating academic partners on articles in the Nature Index journals are split between United States and domestic institutions. Here they are ranked by bilateral collaboration score (CS), 2015–19. CS is derived by summing each institution’s Share on the papers to which authors from both have contributed.

*Count = Article count

Investing in the future

Park’s successors continued to promote research and innovation as the driver of national economic and social advance. Government and industry investment in R&D soared, and basic-research capabilities were expanded. By the mid-1980s and early 1990s the government’s attention had shifted to high-tech industries such as semiconductor design and manufacture. For instance, in 1971 it founded KAIST, which remains a leading national research university (see ‘Manipulating brains with smartphones’).

Manipulating brains with smartphones

A team of researchers at KAIST — not to be confused with the KIST, with which it was initially integrated — has fulfilled a dream of neuroscientists worldwide.

Working with colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle, they have built a novel device capable of remotely controlling the brain circuitry of mice, via a smartphone. It is the first wireless neural device that can continuously deliver multiple drugs and coloured light beams to control brain circuits. Until now, researchers needed rigid metal tubes and optical fibres to accomplish the task.

The device could speed up the study of diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, addiction, depression and pain, says team leader and electrical engineer, Jeong Jae-Woong. Weighing 2 grams, it uses LEGO-like replaceable drug cartridges, a probe the thickness of a human hair, and powerful, low-energy Bluetooth to deliver the drugs and light, which turn neurones on or off without hurting the rodents. This ‘plug-and-play’ interface was the major challenge, Jeong says.

After two years of laboratory and animal trials, the proof-of-concept paper was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering ( R. Qazi et al. Nature Biomed. Eng. 3 , 655–669; 2019 ) by the team of neuroscientists and engineers from electrical, mechanical and software backgrounds. Jeong plans to commercialize the device and technology.

Targeted nation-building programmes were also established. In 1995, for example, the government began a US$1.5-billion, ten-year plan to build up the national broadband infrastructure and provide public programmes about maximizing its use.

The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis prompted many chaebols to shift from the reliance on low-value added exports characteristic of a ‘tiger’ economy towards technology and knowledge-intensive products and services such as semiconductors, mobile phones and mobile applications.

Working with chaebols, the government began developing regional innovation centres such as Gyeonggi, an area of nearly 13 million people surrounding Seoul, which is now regarded as the nation’s economic and innovative powerhouse.

The centre brought industry R&D and production infrastructure together with local and national universities and research facilities. For instance, the Gyeonggi-based Samsung Electronics, Samsung’s flagship subsidiary, is collaborating with SKKU Chemistry to develop a semiconductor material that can reduce the amount of radiation exposure while taking medical X-ray images. By 2010, South Korea had 105 regional innovation centres and 18 techno-parks, as well as 7 federal programmes to strengthen the competitiveness of industrial cluster programmes.

Although government funding continued to promote R&D spending and programmes to boost translational development and scientific, engineering and managerial expertise, the weight of major investment in R&D shifted to the corporate sector in search of patents and profits. Private R&D spending accounted for nearly 80% of South Korea’s total R&D spending in 2019, ahead of leading innovative nations such as Germany, Sweden and Switzerland, at 70%. The shift was supported by R&D tax incentives and importation of foreign technology.

Source: League of Scholars

The new breed

In the 2010s, small to medium-sized businesses in biotechnology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and broadband-based firms began to emerge. Founded by a new generation of entrepreneurs, they were backed by government funding and supported by the national technological infrastructure.

Woowa Brothers is one example, among many, of the strategy’s success. The Seoul-based 2010 start-up exploited the national broadband to build a mobile food-delivery application connecting restaurants, customers and riders.

In December 2018, Woowa joined the ‘unicorn’ club — a rare status denoting a privately held start-up valued at more than US$1 billion — with investment from national and international venture-capital sources. In December 2019, Germany’s Delivery Hero bought the company in a $4-billion deal that will see co-founder and chief executive, Kim Bong Jin, manage the Asian business, including South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong. A delivery robot, self-driving technology and an online customer and revenue-management system for restaurants are in development.

The South Korean government’s systematic approach has been the crucial factor in creating an innovative economy adept at turning ideas from laboratories into products and industries. Martin Hemmert, an expert in east Asian innovation systems, at Korea University, adds that the cultural mindset evident in South Korea helps. “Complacency is not on the cards. The glass is always half empty,” he says.

Even so, as Mazzarol concludes: “It’s a miracle when you consider where Korea was.”

Nature 581 , S54-S56 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01466-7

This article is part of Nature Index 2020 South Korea , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

Updates & Corrections

Correction 02 June 2020 : This article originally gave the incorrect founding date for KAIST. It was founded in 1971, not 1981. The article has now been corrected.

Related Articles

Partner content: Innovative research to reach sustainability goals

Partner content: A private university with a global outlook

Partner content: From basic to breakthrough

Partner content: Accelerating the pace of innovation

Partner content: Mouse model database is a bank of potential

Partner content: Opening new horizons for humanity

Japan moves to halt long-term postgraduate decline by tripling number of PhD graduates

Nature Index 29 AUG 24

Nail your tech-industry interviews with these six techniques

Career Column 28 AUG 24

Can South Korea regain its edge in innovation?

Nature Index 21 AUG 24

Carbon pricing reduces emissions

News & Views 24 JUL 24

Megastudy shows that reminders boost vaccination but adding free rides does not

Article 26 JUN 24

Extending the Sustainable Development Goals to 2050 — a road map

Comment 17 JUN 24

Postdoctoral Researcher - Neural Circuits Genetics and Physiology for Learning and Memory

A postdoctoral position is available to study molecular mechanisms, neural circuits and neurophysiology of learning and memory.

Dallas, Texas (US)

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Assistant/Associate Professor (Tenure Track) - Integrative Biology & Pharmacology

The Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology (https://med.uth.edu/ibp/), McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Scienc...

Houston, Texas (US)

UTHealth Houston

Faculty Positions

The Yale Stem Cell Center invites applications for faculty positions at the rank of Assistant, Associate, or full Professor. Rank and tenure will b...

New Haven, Connecticut

Yale Stem Cell Center

Postdoc/PhD opportunity – Pharmacology of Opioids

Join us at MedUni Vienna to explore the pharmacology of circular and stapled peptide therapeutics targetting the κ-opioid receptor in the periphery.

Vienna (AT)

Medical University of Vienna

Assistant Professor Neuroscience

The Michigan Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan invites applications for tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor.

Ann Arbor, Michigan

University of Michigan; Michigan Neuroscience Institute

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Essay in Asia Policy 17.4

South korea’s investment in the u.s.-rok alliance a case study of the new southern policy.

This essay argues that South Korea’s deliberate efforts to find nexuses between its New Southern Policy (NSP) and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy is an investment in insurance for the U.S.-ROK alliance.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Main argument.

South Korea has been exploring connections between its NSP and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy at the request of, if not pressure from, the U.S. South Korea has expanded the NSP’s scope to include nontraditional security and target areas in the South Pacific. This policy choice is, in part, an investment in insurance for the U.S.-ROK alliance to bolster the partnership and ensure a U.S. security commitment to the Korean Peninsula. Were South Korea not to accommodate the U.S. strategy, Washington might reduce its commitment to the alliance in response. However, adjusting to some elements of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy also gives South Korea leeway to engage more with China without causing the perception that it is strategically tilting toward China.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

• As the U.S. and South Korea increase their cooperation for infrastructure investment in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands, South Korea should demonstrate its interest in coordinating in minilateral settings with Japan, Australia, and India. Doing so would create greater space for South Korea to also participate in China’s Belt and Road Initiative more broadly without causing the U.S. to misperceive that South Korea is tilting toward China.
• Enhancing cooperation with the Quad states in regional maritime security can give South Korea more room to engage with China in responding to regional nontraditional security issues.

Jae Jeok Park is an Associate Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul (South Korea). Previously, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security and a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

Er-win Tan holds the position of Associate Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul (South Korea). His research interests include security dilemma theory, security and diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific, inter-Korean relations, nuclear proliferation, hybrid warfare, geostrategy, and strategic culture.

• U.S.-ROK alliance
• South Korea

About Asia Policy

Asia Policy is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal presenting policy-relevant academic research on the Asia-Pacific that draws clear and concise conclusions useful to today’s policymakers. Asia Policy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October and accepts submissions on a rolling basis. Learn more

Digital Resilience for What? Case Study of South Korea

• August 2021
• CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
• This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.

• University of Oslo

• University of Colombo

Discover the world's research

• 25+ million members
• 160+ million publication pages
• 2.3+ billion citations

• Andrzej Piotrowski

• Kyungmoo Heo
• Daejoong Lee

• Hyeseung Choi
• AM REV PUBLIC ADM

• J MED INTERNET RES
• Kyung Hwan Kim
• Ye Seul Bae

• EunKyo Kang
• Young Joon Park
• Sang Yun Cho

• Yong-kyun Kim

• So Young Bae

• M. Jae Moon
• Recruit researchers
• Join for free
• Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up

Urban Regeneration: A Case of Cheonggyecheon River

Project Location: Seoul, South Korea Timeline: 2002 -2005 (3 years and 6 months) Architects: Mikyoung Kim Design Client: City of Seoul

Seoul , the capital of South Korea, is confronted with many significant issues. The effects of overpopulation and urbanization have resulted in a multitude of challenges, including scarcities in housing, transportation, and parking facilities, as well as the worsening of pollution levels and the unsustainable exploitation of resources. It is always gridlocked. Over a decade, urban and industrial development suffocated the remaining traces of nature in the city’s heart, notably in the congested and flat CBD.

Hoping to spur economic growth by providing new recreation options to residents and solve the city’s chronic runoff problems, The Seoul Metropolitan Government decided to do something bold. An initiative to transform the urban environment of the massive arterial highway by removing it and replacing it with a long, meandering park and stormwater mitigation system.

Degradation of the River

The Cheonggyecheon River is situated amid a historically significant neighbourhood. The first deterioration of the site can be traced back to the 15th century when many factors contributed to its decline. These factors include the expansion and depth of the river channel, the building of a stone and wood embankment, the use of the watercourse as a means of waste disposal, and the heightened sedimentation caused by the deforestation of the surrounding regions. Despite undergoing continuous dredging and modifications throughout the twentieth century, the river channel in the 1950s remained mostly a seasonal stream used by individuals for laundry purposes and as a recreational space for children.

As Seoul underwent a gradual transformation from a mostly rural area to a sprawling East Asian city, the Cheonggyecheon, referred to as the “clear valley stream,” deteriorated into a polluted waterway. The primary function of the stream in question was to serve as Seoul’s central sewage and drainage system, primarily designed to mitigate the risk of flooding.

By the year 1970, the area next to the river was characterized by the presence of slums. Additionally, the quality of the water in the river deteriorated with time due to a series of human interventions, including the process of channelization followed by the application of a concrete layer.

With the rapid progression of urbanization and industry, along with the widespread adoption of automobiles, the riverbed transformed, being repurposed into a 6-kilometre roadway. Above this roadway, a 5.8-kilometre elevated highway was constructed, boasting six lanes to accommodate the increasing vehicular traffic. Before the process of restoration began, the daily volume of vehicles that passed through this particular section amounted to almost 168,000. Among them, a significant proportion of 62.5% constituted vehicles engaged in traffic.

The ramifications of the very crowded transportation system along Cheonggye Street have become more severe. The levels of air pollution, namely criterion pollutants, were found to be much higher than the permitted thresholds. Additionally, the pollution caused by nitrogen oxide is above the established environmental air quality guideline for the city of Seoul. In addition, the concentrations of benzene, a volatile organic compound (VOC) known for its carcinogenic properties, were found to be elevated.

According to a health awareness study conducted among those living or employed near Cheonggyecheon, it was observed that the prevalence of respiratory disorders was more than twice as high compared to individuals residing in other geographical regions (SDI, 2003A). In conjunction with atmospheric pollution, the noise pollution observed in this particular region exceeded the prescribed benchmarks for commercial zones, hence posing a significant impediment to the creation of a desirable residential and occupational milieu.

In the year 2000, an engineering study was conducted which revealed the presence of structural deficiencies in the aforementioned roadways, hence highlighting the imperative need for a significant rehabilitation endeavour. The degradation and contamination of the Cheonggyecheon River stream may be attributed to the processes of urbanization, transportation , and industrial activities.

The objectives established for the urban revitalization initiative included the restoration of Cheonggyecheon’s natural ecosystem and the development of a public space that prioritizes human needs and experiences. 

The proposed project included a range of objectives, including the restoration and landscaping of the stream, the establishment of measures to ensure water resource sustainability, the implementation of sewage treatment systems, the management of traffic flow, the construction of bridges across the river, the preservation and restoration of historical assets, and the effective resolution of social problems. 

In addition to the aforementioned, the plan was formulated with the objectives of the restoration of cultural assets, as well as the conservation of all dug heritage pieces throughout the building process. Enhance the overall quality of air, water, and living conditions. The objective was also to establish a connection between the two geographically divided areas due to the river.

In the year 2003, the river underwent a process of re-exposure and was subsequently designated as the central element of a broader initiative aimed at revitalizing the urban environment. The rerouting of traffic, construction of bridges across the river, establishment of public parks and recreational areas, and renovation of nearby places of historical and cultural significance were undertaken. The enhancement of environmental circumstances resulted in the establishment of a focal point that has value in historical context and possesses aesthetic allure.

The waste that was generated as a result of the destruction was subjected to recycling processes and then used again. The process of urban redevelopment included the transformation of the site into a human-centric and ecologically conscious area, with a shoreline and pathways that run alongside the stream. Embankments were constructed to mitigate the most severe floods that the city may experience during the next two centuries. A total of 13.5 meters were designated to accommodate walkways, two-lane unidirectional roadways, and loading/unloading zones situated on both sides of the stream. A whole sum of 22 bridges was constructed over the Cheonggyecheon, including 5 bridges designated for pedestrian use and 17 bridges designed for motor vehicle traffic.

The stream that has been restored can be accessed from a total of 17 different sites. Terraces and lower-level pavements were constructed along both the top and lower segments of the stream, while the middle part was specifically planned to serve as an environmentally sustainable area. The incorporation of river parks and public art in many sites was undertaken to establish a platform for hosting performances and cultural events, while simultaneously augmenting the total capacity for public engagement and pleasure within the newly developed area.

The process of enhancing the aesthetic appeal of historic streets and structures was undertaken, with particular attention given to the restoration of the Gwangtonggyo Bridge. Originally constructed in 1410 to span the Cheonggyecheon Stream, this bridge was meticulously restored to its former condition, incurring a substantial expenditure of more than $5.9 million.

• Amber, P. (2011) ChonGae Canal Restoration Project / mikyoung Kim design, ArchDaily. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/174242/chongae-canal-restoration-project-mikyoung-kim-design .
• Case study: Cheonggyecheon; Seoul, Korea (2017) Global Designing Cities Initiative. Available at: https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-design-guide/streets/special-conditions/elevated-structure-removal/case-study-cheonggyecheon-seoul-korea/ .
• Cheonggyecheon (2015) Photography Life. Available at: https://photographylife.com/photo-spots/cheonggyecheon .
• Cheonggyecheon Stream restoration project (2011) Landscapeperformance.org. Available at: https://www.landscapeperformance.org/case-study-briefs/cheonggyecheon-stream-restoration-project .
• McAskie, L. (2021) From emissions to Edens: Our top 5 car-free urban transformations, Citychangers.org – Home Base for Urban Shapers. CityChangers.org. Available at: https://citychangers.org/top-5-car-free-urban-transformations/?cn-reloaded=1 .
• River restoration and conservation (no date) Coolgeography.co.uk. Available at: https://www.coolgeography.co.uk/advanced/River_Restoration_Conservation.php .
• Seoul (no date) Worldbank.org. Available at: https://urban-regeneration.worldbank.org/Seoul .
• South Korea: Restoration of the cheonggyecheon river in downtown Seoul (no date) Ser-rrc.org. Available at: https://www.ser-rrc.org/project/south-korea-restoration-of-the-cheonggyecheon-river-in-downtown-seoul/ .
• studioTECHNE (2018) Field notes: Tom goes to Seoul, studio TECHNE | architects. Available at: https://www.technearchitects.com/blogs/2018/12/12/toms-field-notes-from-seoul (Accessed: August 6, 2023).

A Postgraduate student of Architecture, developing an ability of Design led through Research. A perceptive observer who strives to get inspired and, in doing so, become one. Always intrigued by the harmonious relationships between people and space and the juxtaposition of the tangible and intangible in architecture.

Renovation of Castle Grad by ARREA architecture

Colour and Architecture in Wes Anderson’s Cinematic World

Related posts.

Exploring Auroville: Where Architecture Meets Sustainability

Integrating Traditional Water Systems into Contemporary Urban Design

Architectural evolution of Kaunas City, 1919-1939

From Heat Islands to Urban Oases: Strategies for Designing Cooler Cities

The Coalescing Architectural Landscape of Prayagraj

Tanning Industry turned into Economic Opportunities

• Architectural Community
• Architectural Facts
• RTF Architectural Reviews
• Architectural styles
• City and Architecture
• Fun & Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Design Studio Portfolios
• Designing for typologies
• RTF Design Inspiration
• Architecture News
• Career Advice
• Case Studies
• Construction & Materials
• Covid and Architecture
• Interior Design
• Know Your Architects
• Landscape Architecture
• Materials & Construction
• Product Design
• RTF Fresh Perspectives
• Sustainable Architecture
• Top Architects
• Travel and Architecture
• Rethinking The Future Awards 2022
• RTF Awards 2021 | Results
• GADA 2021 | Results
• RTF Awards 2020 | Results
• ACD Awards 2020 | Results
• GADA 2019 | Results
• ACD Awards 2018 | Results
• GADA 2018 | Results
• RTF Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2016 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2015 | Results
• RTF Awards 2014 | Results
• RTF Architectural Visualization Competition 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2020 – Results
• Designer’s Days of Quarantine Contest – Results
• Urban Sketching Competition May 2020 – Results
• RTF Essay Writing Competition April 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2019 – Finalists
• The Ultimate Thesis Guide
• Introduction to Landscape Architecture
• Perfect Guide to Architecting Your Career
• How to Design Architecture Portfolio
• How to Design Streets
• Introduction to Urban Design
• Introduction to Product Design
• Complete Guide to Dissertation Writing
• Introduction to Skyscraper Design
• Educational
• Hospitality
• Institutional
• Office Buildings
• Public Building
• Residential
• Sports & Recreation
• Temporary Structure
• Commercial Interior Design
• Corporate Interior Design
• Healthcare Interior Design
• Hospitality Interior Design
• Residential Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Transportation
• Urban Design
• Host your Course with RTF
• Architectural Writing Training Programme | WFH
• Editorial Internship | In-office
• Graphic Design Internship
• Research Internship | WFH
• Research Internship | New Delhi
• RTF | About RTF
• Submit Your Story

• For the Press
• Our Programs
• Endorsements
• Partner With GDCI
• Guides & Publications
• search Search
• globe Explore by Region
• Global Street Design Guide

Download for Free

Thank you for your interest! The guide is available for free indefinitely. To help us track the impact and geographical reach of the download numbers, we kindly ask you not to redistribute this guide other than by sharing this link. Your email will be added to our newsletter; you may unsubscribe at any time.

" * " indicates required fields

About Streets

• Prioritizing People in Street Design
• Streets Around the World
• Global Influences
• A New Approach to Street Design
• How to Use the Guide
• What is a Street
• Shifting the Measure of Success
• The Economy of Streets
• Streets for Environmental Sustainability
• Safe Streets Save Lives
• Streets Shape People
• Multimodal Streets Serve More People
• What is Possible
• The Process of Shaping Streets
• Aligning with City and Regional Agendas
• Involving the Right Stakeholders
• Setting a Project Vision
• Communication and Engagement
• Costs and Budgets
• Phasing and Interim Strategies
• Coordination and Project Management
• Implementation and Materials
• Maintenance
• Institutionalizing Change
• How to Measure Streets
• Summary Chart
• Measuring the Streets

Street Design Guidance

• Key Design Principles
• Defining Place
• Local and Regional Contexts
• Immediate Context
• Changing Contexts
• Comparing Street Users
• A Variety of Street Users
• Pedestrian Networks
• Pedestrian Toolbox
• Sidewalk Types
• Design Guidance
• Crossing Types
• Pedestrian Refuges
• Sidewalk Extensions
• Universal Accessibility
• Cycle Networks
• Cyclist Toolbox
• Facility Types
• Cycle Facilities at Transit Stop
• Protected Cycle Facilities at Intersections
• Cycle Signals
• Filtered Permeability
• Conflict Zone Markings
• Cycle Share
• Transit Networks
• Transit Toolbox
• Stop Placement
• Sharing Transit Lanes with Cycles
• Contraflow Lanes on One-Way Streets
• Motorist Networks
• Motorist Toolbox
• Corner Radii
• Visibility and Sight Distance
• Traffic Calming Strategies
• Freight Networks
• Freight Toolbox
• Freight Management and Safety
• People Doing Business Toolbox
• Siting Guidance
• Underground Utilities Design Guidance
• Underground Utilities Placement Guidance
• Green Infrastructure Design Guidance
• Benefits of Green Infrastructure
• Lighting Design Guidance
• General Strategies
• Demand Management
• Network Management
• Volume and Access Management
• Parking and Curbside Management
• Speed Management
• Signs and Signals
• Design Speed
• Design Vehicle and Control Vehicle
• Design Year and Modal Capacity
• Design Hour

Street Transformations

• Street Design Strategies
• Street Typologies
• Example 1: 18 m
• Example 2: 10 m
• Pedestrian Only Streets: Case Study | Stroget, Copenhagen
• Example 1: 8 m
• Case Study: Laneways of Melbourne, Australia
• Case Study: Pavement to Parks; San Francisco, USA
• Case Study: Plaza Program; New York City, USA
• Example 1: 12 m
• Example 2: 14 m
• Case Study: Fort Street; Auckland, New Zealand
• Example 1: 9 m
• Case Study: Van Gogh Walk; London, UK
• Example 1: 13 m
• Example 2: 16 m
• Example: 3: 24 m
• Case Study: Bourke St.; Sydney, Australia
• Example 2: 22 m
• Example 3: 30 m
• Case Study: St. Marks Rd.; Bangalore, India
• Example 2: 25 m
• Example 3: 31 m
• Case Study: Second Ave.; New York City, USA
• Example 1: 20 m
• Example 2: 30 m
• Example 3: 40 m
• Case Study: Götgatan; Stockholm, Sweden
• Example 1: 16 m
• Example 2: 32 m
• Example 3: 35 m
• Case Study: Swanston St.; Melbourne, Australia
• Example 1: 32 m
• Example 2: 38 m
• Case Study: Boulevard de Magenta; Paris, France
• Example 1: 52 m
• Example 2: 62 m
• Example 3: 76 m
• Case Study: Av. 9 de Julio; Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Example: 34 m
• Case Study: A8erna; Zaanstad, The Netherlands
• Example: 47 m

Case Study: Cheonggyecheon; Seoul, Korea

• Example: 40 m
• Case Study: 21st Street; Paso Robles, USA
• Types of Temporary Closures
• Example: 21 m
• Case Study: Raahgiri Day; Gurgaon, India
• Example: 20 m
• Case Study: Jellicoe St.; Auckland, New Zealand
• Example: 30 m
• Case Study: Queens Quay; Toronto, Canada
• Case Study: Historic Peninsula; Istanbul, Turkey
• Existing Conditions
• Case Study 1: Calle 107; Medellin, Colombia
• Case Study 2: Khayelitsha; Cape Town, South Africa
• Case Study 3: Streets of Korogocho; Nairobi, Kenya
• Intersection Design Strategies
• Intersection Analysis
• Intersection Redesign
• Mini Roundabout
• Small Raised Intersection
• Neighborhood Gateway Intersection
• Intersection of Two-Way and One-Way Streets
• Major Intersection: Reclaiming the Corners
• Major Intersection: Squaring the Circle
• Major Intersection: Cycle Protection
• Complex Intersection: Adding Public Plazas
• Complex Intersection: Improving Traffic Circles
• Complex Intersection: Increasing Permeability
• Acknowledgements
• Conversion Chart
• Metric Charts
• Summary Chart of Typologies Illustrated
• User Section Geometries
• Assumptions for Intersection Dimensions
• search Keyword Search
• Special Conditions
• Elevated Structure Removal

The Seoul Metropolitan Government decided to dismantle the 10-lane roadway and the 4-lane elevated highway that carried over 170,000 vehicles daily along the Cheonggyecheon stream. The transformed street encourages transit use over private car use, and more environmentally sustainable, pedestrian oriented public space. The project contributed to a 15.1% increase in bus ridership and a 3.3% increase in subway ridership between 2003 and 2008. The revitalized street now attracts 64,000 visitors daily.

• Improve air quality, water quality, and quality of life.
• Reconnect the two parts of the city that were previously divided by road infrastructure.

Lessons Learned

Innovative governance and interagency coordination were critical to the process.

Public engagement, with residents, local merchants, and entrepreneurs, was important to streamlining the process.

Reducing travel-lane capacity resulted in a decrease in vehicle traffic.

Involvement

Public Agencies Central Government, Seoul Municipality, Seoul Metropolitan Government, Cultural Heritage Administration

Private Groups and Partnerships Cheonggyecheon Research Group

Citizen Associations and Unions Citizen’s Committee for Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project

Designers and Engineers Seoul Development Institute urban design team, Dongmyung Eng, Daelim E&C

Close to 4,000 meetings were held with residents. A “Wall of Hope” program was developed to encourage involvement and resulted in 20,000 participants.

Key Elements

Removal of elevated highway concrete structure.

Daylighting of a previously covered urban stream.

Creation of an extensive new open space along the daylighted stream.

Creation of pedestrian amenities and recreational spaces (two plazas, eight thematic places).

Construction of 21 new bridges, reconnecting the urban fabric.

Project Timeline

Adapted by Global Street Design Guide published by Island Press.

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, food choice behavior: a case study in south korea.

British Food Journal

ISSN : 0007-070X

Article publication date: 5 October 2021

Issue publication date: 21 March 2022

With dining out increasing globally, policy making and research have been on menu labeling as a source for meaningful nutrition information. Yet, despite attempts to mandate menu labeling and the studies examining consumer's perception of menu nutritional information and how this perception impacts dining behavior and intention to consume, concerns for obesity and malnutrition continue to be at the forefront of public health discussions. This study attempts to comprehend consumers' nutritional goals, intention and food choice behavior, thereby suggesting how to leverage this information for change.

Design/methodology/approach

Using survey data and a proposed and validated theoretical model, the study identified the different aspects of consumer's food choice by analyzing the relationship of consumer's perceived importance toward nutrition information, food choice and healthy daily behavior, and intention to improve health.

Consumers who perceive higher importance of nutrition information are more likely to choose healthy food when dining out and have stronger health improvement intention. The results also suggested healthy food choice and healthy daily behavior positively influenced health improvement intention.

Originality/value

Despite the previous studies on menu labeling and the numerous policy mandates, there is still concern about the food choice behavior of consumers while eating out. No serious effort exists to regulate food service providers similar to the regulation of other consumer products, whereby consumers are generally protected from harm. This study suggests through education, promotional marketing and industry partnerships, motivating and leveraging consumers' desire for healthy food choices could move food service providers and policy makers to change what information is provided.

• Nutrition labeling
• Ood choice behavior

Kim, Y.H. , Lee, S. and Barber, N. (2022), "Food choice behavior: a case study in South Korea", British Food Journal , Vol. 124 No. 5, pp. 1641-1658. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-05-2021-0556

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles

All feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support

1st Edition

Diplomatic Style and Foreign Policy A Case Study of South Korea

• Taylor & Francis eBooks (Institutional Purchase) Opens in new tab or window

Description

The book explores diplomatic style and its use as a means to provide analytical insight into a state’s foreign policy, with a specific focus on South Korea. Diplomatic style attracts scant attention from scholars. It is dismissed as irrelevant in the context of diplomacy’s universalism; misconstrued as a component of foreign policy; alluded to perfunctorily amidst broader considerations of foreign policy; or wholly absented from discussions in which it should comprise an important component. In contrast to these views, practitioners maintain a faith-like confidence in diplomatic style. They assume it plays an important role in providing analytical insight, giving them advantage over scholars in the analysis of foreign policy. This book explores diplomatic style and its use as a means to provide analytical insight into foreign policy, using South Korea as a case study. It determines that style remains important to diplomatic practitioners, and provides analytical insight into a state’s foreign policy by highlighting phenomena of policy relevance, which narrows the range of information an analyst must cover. The book demonstrates how South Korea’s diplomatic style – which has a tendency towards emotionalism, and is affected by status, generational change, cosmopolitanism, and estrangement from international society – can be a guide to understanding South Korea’s contemporary foreign policy. This book will be of much interest to students of diplomacy studies, foreign policy, Asian politics, and International Relations in general.

Table of Contents

Jeffrey Robertson is Assistant Professor at Yonsei University, South Korea and a Visiting Fellow at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy (APCD), the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University (ANU).

About VitalSource eBooks

VitalSource is a leading provider of eBooks.

• Access your materials anywhere, at anytime.
• Customer preferences like text size, font type, page color and more.
• Take annotations in line as you read.

Multiple eBook Copies

This eBook is already in your shopping cart. If you would like to replace it with a different purchasing option please remove the current eBook option from your cart.

Book Preview

The country you have selected will result in the following:

• Product pricing will be adjusted to match the corresponding currency.
• The title Perception will be removed from your cart because it is not available in this region.

International Case Studies of Smart Cities: Songdo, Republic of Korea