Balancing Personal Privacy and Public Safety during COVID-19: The Case of South Korea
It addresses privacy-safety trade-offs in public health crises, offering policy insights, but is incremental as it builds on existing debates with a specific case study.
The paper examines South Korea's COVID-19 response, focusing on balancing personal privacy and public safety through epidemiological investigations, and proposes a COVID index based on factors like infection rates and medical infrastructure.
There has been vigorous debate on how different countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. To secure public safety, South Korea actively used personal information at the risk of personal privacy whereas France encouraged voluntary cooperation at the risk of public safety. In this article, after a brief comparison of contextual differences with France, we focus on South Korea's approaches to epidemiological investigations. To evaluate the issues pertaining to personal privacy and public health, we examine the usage patterns of original data, de-identification data, and encrypted data. Our specific proposal discusses the COVID index, which considers collective infection, outbreak intensity, availability of medical infrastructure, and the death rate. Finally, we summarize the findings and lessons for future research and the policy implications.