Crimes against Community: The Therapeutic Politics of South Korea’s COVID-19 Public Health Surveillance

Abstract

This essay argues that the success of South Korea’s COVID-19 responses—called “K-Quarantine”—is symptomatic of the country’s liberal politics in crisis. The therapeutic politics of K-Quarantine is enacted by an amalgam of moral guilt and legal liabilities for damages to the community, framing the COVID-stricken public as potential criminals against community. In this political context characterized by potential guilt, the public feel culpable if they resist the overshadowing power of public security. This essay offers a critique of the public security rhetoric, examining the case of an LGBTQ South Korean charged on violations of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act amid the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020. A critical evaluation of invasive and punitive measures found in the case demonstrates that the K-Quarantine strategy contradicts its own underlying liberal ideal of the autonomous subject because its public health deliberation reproduces a guilt mandate by constructing a perpetrator/victim binary.