The Paradox of Successful Government Responses to COVID- 19 in South Korea

초록

This chapter aims to shed new light on Korean society and politics during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine why the early success of the Moon Jae-in government in combating COVID-19 did not lead to long-term political success. To address this question, we focus on government trust and its changes. Analytically, we used a two-wave panel survey during the pandemic and identified two findings. First, Korea’s early response to COVID-19 was notably successful, leading to political consequences such as high government trust (60%) and a landslide victory for the ruling party in the 2020 legislative elections. Second, government trust dropped by 14% a year after the outbreak of COVID-19. This is the political paradox of Korea’s success against COVID-19:Â The early success reduced public concerns and fear, causing Korean citizens to shift their focus to real estate and the economy. Negative performance evaluations on these two issues caused a decline in government trust from which the Moon Jae-in government could not recover. These results have important implications for Korean politics and society. © 2025 Taisuke Fujita, Hidehiro Yamamoto, Youngho Cho, Sang- Jin Han and Yida Zhai. All rights reserved.