Governance, technology and citizen behavior in pandemic: Lessons from COVID-19 in East Asia

Abstract

Corona Virus (CODID-19) was first reported in Wuhan in December 2019, then spread in different parts of China, and gradually became a global pandemic in March 2020. While the death toll is still increasing, the epicenter of casualty has shifted from Asia to Europe, and that of the affected people has shifted to USA. This paper analyzes the responses in East Asian countries, in China, Japan and South Korea, and provides some commonalities and lessons. While countries have different governance mechanism, it was found that a few governance decisions in respective countries made a difference, along with strong community solidarity and community behavior. Extensive use of emerging technologies is made along with medical/health care treatment to make the response more effective and reduce the risk of the spread of the disease. Although the pandemic was a global one, its responses were local, depending on the local governance, socio-economic and cultural context.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Citizen behavior; East Asia; Emerging technology; Governance response.

Fig. 1

Growth of globally affected COVID-19 affected people with key WHO decisions (drawn by authors with basic data from John Hopkins Corona virus Resource Center [4] with WHO rolling updates [5].

Fig. 2

a. Total number of confirmed, recovered and death in China, Korea and Japan. Panel b. Daily increase of confirmed, recovered and death in China, Korea and Japan.

Fig. 3

Chronological changes and key policy decisions in China.

Fig. 4

Basic concept of countermeasures of COVID-19. (Translated and prepared by authors from original figure of MoHW [13]).