Learning from Past Pandemic Governance: Early Response and Public-Private Partnerships in Testing of Covid-19 in South Korea

Tuesday, October 20, 2020 at  9:00 pm ET

Speaker: June Park, PhD (George Washington University)

Moderator: Professor William W. Grimes (Boston University)

How can political elites learn from the past to enhance sustainability of their leadership in a pandemic situation? How did South Korea’s large-scale COVID-19 testing work, and what was the role of the South Korean in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) industry? Learn all about it through this BUCSA webinar as June Park (George Washington University/National Research Foundation of Korea) presents findings from her latest publication with Eunbin Chung (University of Utah) in the special issue on ‘Pandemics, COVID-19, Sustainability and Development’ in World Development. The publication offers a theoretical framework of policy implementation that combines collaboration between public and private sectors (“Public-Private Partnership,” or PPP) to efficiently deal with urgent crises such as COVID-19. The authors explain the role of new institutions prompted by policy failure precedence (Time 1: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2015) that at a later time period (Time 2: COVID-19 in 2020) allow for the activation of PPPs with the aim to extend the political life of incumbent leaderships.

About the Author:

Dr. June Park is an East Asia Voices Initiative Fellow of the East Asia National Resources Center at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. She is also a Next Generation Researcher at the National Research Foundation of Korea for her first book manuscript, ‘Trade Wars & Currency Conflict: China, South Korea and Japan’s Responses to U.S. Pressures since the Global Financial Crisis,’ and she is working on her second book project, ‘Europe’s Challenges & Responses: Between Faustian Bargains with China and U.S. Pressures since Brexit’. Using a framework of institutional variance, her first book manuscript attempts to answer why the three countries have not acted in the same way upon encountering U.S. protectionism, and provides a mechanism for predicting policy moves. Her second book project also utilizes the framework of institutional variance to examine the varied policy responses from Germany, France and the UK post-Brexit to China and the U.S. in the era of geo-economic conflict and artificial intelligence. Her writings have appeared in peer-reviewed publications such as World Development and Asian Perspective, as well as policy-oriented publications such as The Diplomat and East Asia Forum.

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