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Surveillance, Safety, and Scandal | | | Introduction | |
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< | During the COVID-19 outbreak, South Korea was widely commended for its efficient and effective response. South Korea and the United States both reported their first case in January 2020 but had completely different trajectories moving forward. By September 2020, South Korea had logged only 23,000 cases while the United States had an average of over 40,000 new cases a day. The reason for this vast difference? Surveillance. | >
> | During the COVID-19 outbreak, South Korea earned widespread praise for its swift and effective response. South Korea had less than 25,000 cases by September 2020 while the United States reported 40,000 new cases daily by this time. Many attributed this stark difference to South Korea’s aggressive contact tracing system, which relied heavily on surveillance. Yet, the reality of its success and its broader implications raise critical questions about the role of privacy, culture, and governance in managing public health crises. | | | Surveillance | |
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< | South Korea’s main way of containing the outbreak was through a centralized, government-run contact tracing system. The government collected and used information about individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 and sent text alerts detailing where and when they visited a specific place. This level of detail of information was predominately gathered through cell phone and credit card use. For example, these texts would say “Patient #3 visited a wholesale supermarket in X borough on March 23 from 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.” or “Patient #4 had dinner at X restaurant at X mall from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.” These alerts would be sent to anyone in the local area as well as being available on the Ministry of Health and Welfare website. | >
> | South Korea’s contact tracing program operated at an unprecedented level of detail. Credit card transactions, cell phone logs, and footage from 1.7 million public CCTV cameras were integrated into a centralized database, enabling authorities to map the movements of confirmed COVID-19 patients with precision. Alerts like “Patient #4 visited X restaurant at Y time” were sent to residents in affected areas. | | | | |
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< | In a highly technological and cashless society, it was incredibly easy for the South Korean government to utilize its credit card and bank transaction database to retroactively track where people went. People use their credit cards to pay for groceries at the supermarket, dinner at a restaurant, and especially to use public transportation in Seoul. In addition, cell phone providers in South Korea are required to log connections between cell phone towers and phones. The cell phone logs were able to confirm that Patient #3 visited the supermarket and Patient #4 at dinner at X restaurant. On top of tracking credit card transactions and cell phone logs, the government utilized its 1.7 million closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in public places to confirm additional details, such as whether Patient #3 and Patient #4 were wearing masks and were accompanied by others when visiting the supermarket or restaurant. | >
> | This system allowed for rapid disinfection of contaminated locations, identification of potentially exposed individuals, and a sense of public empowerment to avoid high-risk areas. But was it truly surveillance that accounted for South Korea’s low number of cases? | | | | |
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< | Safety | >
> | Epidemiologists question whether contact tracing alone can control a virus as transmissible as SARS-CoV-2. Other critical factors included South Korea’s robust testing infrastructure, isolation of travelers, and high-quality healthcare system. Countries like Taiwan and Singapore achieved similar or better outcomes without resorting to such invasive measures. By comparison, China’s draconian lockdowns failed to achieve proportional results, hampered by gaps in healthcare capacity and inconsistent enforcement. | | | | |
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< | The highly detailed level of surveillance and specific information gathered from tracking credit card and cell phone use on top of CCTV data allowed the government to quickly quarantine and sterilize locations visited by patients. The public was also able to determine whether they were in proximity to patients and decide to get tested themselves or avoid specific areas that were recently visited by a patient. | >
> | Thus, while surveillance was a tool, it was likely not the decisive factor. | | | | |
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< | While this level of surveillance may be shocking, the public opinion of South Korea has been overwhelmingly positive. COVID-19 fatalities in South Korea are a third of the global average. The US has about 341 COVID-19-related deaths per 100,000 population whereas South Korea has about 66 deaths. People were willing to sacrifice their privacy and submit themselves to extremely detailed tracking in exchange for not getting sick, not getting someone they love sick, and not dying. | >
> | Privacy and Public Trust | | | | |
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< | Scandal | >
> | The South Korean public’s overwhelming acceptance of surveillance highlights the cultural context in which these measures were implemented. In collectivist societies like South Korea, communal well-being often outweighs individual freedoms. Many saw privacy as a necessary sacrifice to protect themselves and their communities. However, this perspective is not universal. In countries like the United States and Australia, where individual liberty holds paramount value, such surveillance would likely spark significant resistance, as seen in the debates over mask mandates and lockdowns. | | | | |
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< | It’s no surprise the plethora of social issues that arise from publishing extremely detailed activity of patients. For example, an alert would say “Male, 58, an employee at a bank passed by X area and visited a hotel between X times, and then went to X movie theater.” Someone living in the area may be able to take their pieces of information and figure out that this is Mr. Kim who works at KB Bank. But Mr. Kim is married, so why did he go to a hotel? He must be having an extramarital affair. A similar case where speculation of someone having an extramarital affair arose from an alert stating that a male shared a meal with his sister-in-law. Why was he meeting his sister-in-law without his wife? It’s weird for someone to be so close to their sister-in-law. | >
> | Yet, even within South Korea, the program’s execution had unintended consequences. The publication of personal details—such as patients’ movements and activities—opened the door to social stigmatization. Speculation about extramarital affairs or “irresponsible” behavior often became fodder for public judgment, eroding trust in the system for those affected. | | | | |
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< | The public was able to apply their own personal standards of a “good husband” or “good person” when reading these alerts. In addition to the stigma of being a COVID-19 patient even after recovery, patients were subject to social scrutiny and unrealistic standards of the South Korean public. Why did a nurse visit so many places in a short amount of time when she should have been more careful as a nurse? Why did Patient X go clubbing when they should be more cautious during the COVID-19 outbreak? | >
> | Beyond Privacy vs. Safety | | | | |
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< | It’s questionable whether there are any lessons about individual privacy and the dangers of surveillance arising from the South Korean government’s contact tracing program. The majority of the South Korean population is largely unopposed to the attack on their privacy and values their safety over privacy. If this had happened in a more individualistic country like the United States and Australia, there’s no doubt that individuals would have complained about the government's infringement of various freedoms. In a collectivist country like South Korea, this era of extreme surveillance and contact tracing is seen more as a necessary action than a necessary evil. If one country is able to accept attacks on privacy and personal freedom as a norm, then it raises the question of whether the value of privacy is society-dependent. | >
> | While the dichotomy between privacy and safety often dominates discussions of surveillance, it offers little insight into the deeper questions about how societies should balance competing values in times of crisis. Instead of viewing privacy and safety as opposing forces, we might consider different factors that could have helped this type of response. Governments, like the South Korean government, need to justify their surveillance measures with clear metrics and evidence showing their effectiveness. The surveillance and notification program in South Korea could have been more palatable to the public if it published less irrelevant information on the activities of patients and had more anonymized notifications. | | | | |
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> | More transparency on how the data is used and how long it is kept could have increased public trust in the program. The program also disproportionately affected specific groups, such as members of the [https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/19/south-korea-coronavirus-scapegoat-shincheonji/][Shincheonji Church]]. The notification alerts led these members to be even more ostracized by the public when they started using cash to dodge the tracing program. By making this group of people outsiders, the program essentially created a larger risk of pushing people away from being a part of society. Unwatched, outside groups may be able to do more good than the main community, but the ostracized church members committed despicable acts. | | | | |
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It's not clear to me what this draft is about. | >
> | When surveillance becomes a core aspect of society, like that of South Korea, individuals who do not want their data to be collected or watched everywhere they go are forced to be fragmented from society. The awareness of being watched increases emotional distress and can lead to a deterioration of mental health. If escaping society is the only solution people have, then society will inevitably deteriorate as technology becomes more prevalent. Some see society as so unlivable that they resort to propofol abuse or suicide. Ultimately, a society prioritizing surveillance over inclusivity risks alienating its members, fostering division, and exacerbating the issues it seeks to resolve, leading to a fractured community and a diminished sense of collective well-being. | | | | |
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< | Contact tracing actually turned out to be mostly useless in combatting SARS-Co-v2 infections, because the disease spread so easily: one might as well have done contact tracing for influenza. Other mitigation measures, including comprehensive testing, isolation of all foreigners, and the presence of a first-class health care system might well turn out to have been far more important. If there is professional epidemiological evidence of the importance of contact tracing as opposed to other mitigation measures, you don't cite or refer to it. China, of course, used even more invasive mitigation measures, including subjecting entire populations to de facto imprisonment for long periods of time, but did not achieve anything like equivalent mitigation. Its essentially haphazard and weak healthcare system accounts largely for its casualty rates. There is meanwhile no evidence that all the payments-system tracking improved health results above those in other small, wealthy, Confucian societies, like Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, that used mobile-phone based contact tracing without all the other domestic spying. | | | | |
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< | Your sole conclusion from the rather lengthy factual review is that the value placed upon personal freedom, including privacy, is culturally relative. That seems like an easy conclusion to draw and I don't think any reader will doubt it. My spring course (Computers, Privacy and the Constitution) which actually treats your subject, is built around that assumption as well, inasmuch as I think the cultural history of the US constitutions is necessarily the real basis of our thinking about citizens' rights under conditions of rapid technological change.
The primary route to improvement, therefore, seems to be to me to go past the point where the present draft stops. You can heavily cut your factual recitation: a paragraph and a link or three suffices to document the perceived difference in cultural outlooks. This frees the space for you to take the idea further, in some direction that helps the reader learn something less evident, and perhaps transcends the sterile "privacy v. safety" framing we hear so much about and learn so little from.
Sources
Why aren't these just links in the text, anchored to the relevant phrases in the draft? We are reading and writing in the Web: how does it serve the reader, who can just click on a link to read the source, to have to scroll around in your document to find the relevant link to consult?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51733145
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronavirus-south-korea-tracking-apps/2020/03/13/2bed568e-5fac-11ea-ac50-18701e14e06d_story.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/coronavirus-tracking-app-cheating-partners-married-south-korea-affair-a9514996.html
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/02/849535944/south-koreas-tracking-of-covid-19-patients-raises-privacy-concerns
https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2020/10/12/parti-covid-19-contact-tracing-why-south-koreas-success-is-hard-to-replicate/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-surveillance-technology-powered-south-koreas-covid-19-response/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/651509/south-korea-cctv-cameras/
https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230524000629
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality | >
> | Conclusion
While South Korea’s surveillance-driven contact tracing program played a role in curbing the spread of COVID-19, its implementation raises important questions about the costs to privacy, trust, and societal cohesion. The program’s success highlights the potential of technology in addressing public health crises. Still, its shortcomings underscore the importance of transparency, cultural sensitivity, and the need to balance safety with fundamental human rights. The South Korean experience now serves both as a model and a warning as societies make their way into the increasingly digital future, reminding us that true solutions must put a premium not just on outcomes, but also on the dignity and inclusivity of all individuals. |
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