• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.125-159
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• 2020

Amid global pandemic of covid-19, Korean government's response has drawn wide attention among social scientists as well as medical studies. The role of Korean state and civil society has attracted particular attention among others. Yet, this paper criticizes extant studies on Korean case which focus on the extensive intervention of the strong state and subjective attitude of Korean citizens in coping with covid-19. The concept of the strong state lacks social scientific specification and subjective citizens do not match with Korean realities. This article argues that Korean state's capacity in collecting and mobilizing digital data may offer better understanding for the successful responses to the pandemic. First, Korean state is the ultimate coordinator in collecting, analyzing and applying big data about the expansion of covid-19 with its huge network of dataveillance. Also, such role has been largely based upon relevant legal framework and well prepared manuals and cooperation with civic actors and companies. In other words, Korean digital dataveillance had demonstrated its transparency and cooperative governance. Second, such dataveillance capacity has deep roots in the long-term development of Korean state's big data management. Korean state has evolved about thirty years while enhancing digital data network within governments, companies and private sectors. Third, the relationship between Korean state's dataveillance and civil society can be characterized as a state centered push model. This model demonstrates highly effective governmental responses to covid-19 crisis but fall short of building social consensus in balancing individual freedom, human rights and effective containment policies. It means communitarian solidarity among citizens has not been a major factor in Korea's successful response yet.

• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.71-92
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• 2024

The world we live in is becoming more convenient thanks to the inventions of science and technology. Still, the world is also becoming more and more unpredictable with the current situation of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). The Covid-19 pandemic brought the biggest global disaster ever with 774,631,444 infected people and 7,031,216 deaths (WHO on February 11, 2024) but it seems that humanity is gradually forgetting this disaster. Meanwhile the economic stimulus packages worth trillions of dollars from governments after the pandemic have further caused the world debt bubble to swell. The bubble burst scenario is something that many economic experts fear. Apparently, in the transitional period of the early decades of the 21st century, the world's economic, cultural, political, social, natural, and environmental aspects have undergone profound transformations: from the real estate and finance crises in the United States since 2008; through the melting of the Arctic ice over the past several decades; to the double disaster of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011. Especially, in the context of the world economic crisis after the COVID-19 pandemic, the human achievements of the past thousands of years are in jeopardy of being wiped out in an instant. Many people are predicting a bad scenario for a chain collapse. Facing the signals of an imminent economic catastrophe based on the appearance of "the Gray Rhino, Black Swan and White Elephant," many drawn in by Eschatological thought declare that Doomsday will occur shortly. This is the time for many other people to hope for the incoming Messiah. The Messiah is said to appear when people feel despair or suffer a great disaster because faith in the Savior can help them overcome adversity mentally. This research will find out how adherents of Buddhism view and deal with civilizational crises by examining history via symbols associated with Maitreya as based upon the Buddhist Messiah, Maitreya.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.356-369
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• 2024

Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore healthcare providers' experiences in managing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and its impact on healthcare services. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted with 34 healthcare professionals across 15 districts in Bangladesh. Among the participants, 24 were health managers or administrators stationed at the district or upazila (sub-district) level, and 10 were clinicians providing care to patients with COVID-19. The telephone interviews were conducted in Bangla, audio-recorded, transcribed, and then translated into English. Data were analyzed thematically. Results: Most interviewees identified a range of issues within the health system. These included unpreparedness, challenges in segregating COVID-19 patients, maintaining isolation and home quarantine, a scarcity of intensive care unit beds, and ensuring continuity of service for non-COVID-19 patients. The limited availability of personal protective equipment, a shortage of human resources, and logistical challenges, such as obtaining COVID-19 tests, were frequently cited as barriers to managing the pandemic. Additionally, changes in the behavior of health service seekers, particularly increased aggression, were reported. The primary motivating factor for healthcare providers was the willingness to continue providing health services, rather than financial incentives. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique set of challenges for health systems, while also providing valuable lessons in managing a public health crisis. To effectively address future health crises, it is crucial to resolve a myriad of issues within the health system, including the inequitable distribution of human resources and logistical challenges.

• The Journal of Economics, Marketing and Management
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.39-50
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• 2021

Purpose: This study is to analyze the changes of consumption patterns to diagnose the economic impacts on consumers' market during COVID-19, and to suggest implications to overcome the new social and economic crisis of Jeju Island. Research design, data, and methodology: We collected a set of credit card transaction records issued by BC Card Company from merchants in Jeju Special Self-Governing Province for past 4 years from 2017 to 2020 from the Jeju Data Hub run by Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. The big data contains details of approved credit card transactions including the approval numbers, amount, locations and types of merchants, time and age of users, etc. The researchers summed up amount in monthly basis, transforming big data to small data to analyze the changes of consumption before and after COVID-19. Results: Sales fell sharply in transportation industries including airlines, and overall consumption by age group decreased while the decrease in consumption among the seniors was relatively small. The sales of Yeon-dong and Yongdam-dong in Jeju City also fell significantly compared to other regions. As a result of the paired t-test of all 73 samples in Jeju City, the p-value of the mean consumption of the credit card in 2019 and 2020 is significant, statistically proven that the total consumption amount in the two years is different. Conclusions: We found there are sensitive spots that can be strategically approached based on the changes in consumption patterns by industry, region, and age although most of companies and small businesses have been hit by COVID-19. It is necessary for local companies and for the government to be focusing their support on upgrading services, in order to prevent declining sales and job instability for their employees, creating strategies to retain jobs and prevent customer churn in the face of the crisis. As Jeju Province is highly dependent on the tertiary industry, including tourism, it is suggested to create various strategies to overcome the crisis of the pandemic by constantly monitoring the sales trends of local companies.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.179-193
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• 2023

It is undeniable that urban greenspace is the soul of a city. Conventional urban greenspace such as parks, community gardens, playgrounds etc. located within a city reduce the negative effects of pollution, play a major role in the survival of the urban ecosystem, and promote healthy lifestyles. Today, 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas, which is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Projections show that urbanization and the gradual migration to urban areas combined with the fast growth of the world's population, could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050 and almost 90% of this increase will take place in Asia(UN, 2018). As a result, many plots in the cities are and will continue to be occupied with buildings to provide residential support to the increased population. This will dangerously decrease urban greenspaces. Moreover, worldwide, food crisis, energy crisis, and social crisis is posing a great threat to the existence of mankind. Additionally, the COVID - 19 has introduced a new lifestyle where from work culture to community configuration has drastically transformed. In this scenario, residential buildings will have to serve more than just providing privacy and shelter. As urban greenspaces are being occupied by concrete residential buildings, these buildings will have to compensate for the percentage of urban green they are destroying and the issues they are imposing in the process. The goal of this thesis is to design, architecturally define and, categorize comprehensive 'sustainable Greenspace'(S.G.S) for the multi-family housing scenario. These will be different than the conventional green (veranda, rooftop green) we commonly see in residential buildings. An old, dilapidated apartment building will be the target of remodeling to fulfill the purpose of this thesis.

• Journal of Christian Education in Korea
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• v.72
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• pp.7-24
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• 2022

Christian education for the world after COVID-19 needs to use rapid changes in the surrounding situation as an opportunity to overcome a new crisis so that the church can achieve its educational mission. If the biggest dilemma in the post-Corona era is that there is no authoritative educational prescription anywhere, the most reasonable option for church education in this situation is to emphasize and cultivate learners' ability to flexibly cope with rules that are completely different than before COVID-19. As a natural result of the crisis, Christian education needs to be more interested in the trend of social change in the pandemic era(glocalization, digital transformation, economic inequality, educational environment change, church crisis) and actively reflect its contents in education. In addition, while operating a mobile(or online) church school that combines offline and online, there is an urgent need for an innovative transition to a core church school where certain church schools and churches cooperate with each other, a church school that guarantees a safe learning space, and an ecological church school that is interested in education dealing with climate change and ecology.

• Journal of Appropriate Technology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.102-114
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• 2021

India has recently experienced an acute crisis confronting the COVID-19 pandemic as confirmed cases exceeded 11.73 million in March 2021, which was the second worst scale only after the United States. The strict lockdown measures as well as the pandemic itself posed a serious threat of survival, in particular, to immigrant workers engaged in informal sectors, which triggered their reverse immigration. In case the COVID-19 pandemic continues in 2021, it is estimated that in the sector of tourism and service alone, more than 20 million jobs will disappear. The damage on industry is already being realized with the significant decrease of workforce. It is important to note, however, that jobless growth and labor polarization were observed even before the outbreak of COVID-19, and that the pandemic only served as one of the trigger catalysts that made those submerged problems burst out. In this study, we examine the structural problems in industry and labor market in India and consider the social context and efficacy of the "Make in India" or "Atmanirbhar Bhrat" policy. The latter initiative was presented in the trenches of the pandemic in 2020. While considering the complexity of problems, we would like to pursue a future-oriented approach and propose a direction in restructuring the labor market, attempted at reversing the critical conditions following the fourth industrial revolution and digitization into the shortcut to labor market restructuring.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.222-245
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• 2020

In the pandemic crisis, many governments implemented harsh interventions that might contradict democratic values and civil liberties. In Taiwan, the debate over whether or not to reveal personal information of infected persons to limit the coronavirus's spread poses the democratic dilemma between public health and civil liberties. This study examines whether and explains how Taiwan's people respond to the choice between individual privacy and collective security. We used survey data gathered in May 2020 to show that, first, the democratic values did not deter the pursuit of collective safety at the cost of civil liberty; rather, people with higher social trust were more likely to give up their civil liberties in exchange for public safety. Second, people who support democratic values and pursue collective security tend to avoid violating privacy by opposing the release of personal information. This study proves that democratic values do not necessarily threaten collective safety and that the pursuit of common good can co-exist with personal privacy.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.533-536
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• 2020

Strengthening of the health system is a safety imperative, especially in a crisis as caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While there is a need for enhancing the number and skill sets of the public health professionals, especially the frontline workers, it will be prudent to use the digital health technologies, including artificial intelligence, in enhancing the capacity of the healthcare professional education and delivery. However, it has to be ensured that an ethical and safe approach is adopted to develop and use digital health technology and, ethically appropriate training is imparted, to enhance the capacity of the human resources for health, leading to an overall health system strengthening.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.417-440
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• 2020

The coronavirus pandemic of 2019-20 confronted fiscally dominant regimes around the world with the question of whether the large deficits caused by the health crisis should be monetized or financed by issuing debt. The unpleasant monetarist arithmetic of Sargent and Wallace (1981) states that in a fiscally dominant regime tighter money now can cause higher inflation in the future. In spite of the qualifier 'unpleasant,' this result is positive in nature, and, therefore, void of normative content. I analyze conditions under which it is optimal in a welfare sense for the central bank to delay inflation by issuing debt to finance part of the fiscal deficit. The analysis is conducted in the context of a model in which the aforementioned monetarist arithmetic holds, in the sense that if the government finds it optimal to delay inflation, it does so knowing that it would result in higher inflation in the future. The central result of the paper is that delaying inflation is optimal when the fiscal deficit is expected to decline over time.