TY - JOUR T1 - The sociopolitical context of the COVID-19 response in South Korea JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002714 VL - 5 IS - 5 SP - e002714 AU - Hani Kim Y1 - 2020/05/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/5/e002714.abstract N2 - Summary boxThe existing reports tend to portray the effective interventions and policies as if they operate independently of the surrounding political and social processes. As a result, these reports have limited insights and public health value for diverse health system contexts, especially more resource-constrained settings.In times of a global pandemic of an unprecedented scale that has shaken the human societies as profoundly as COVID-19 has, it is urgent for us to collectively challenge ourselves to think beyond the business-as-usual mode and to imagine new approaches and collaborations for pandemic preparedness over the long term.Situating the lessons from COVID-19 control efforts within a specific sociopolitical context is necessary to maximise insights on how specific public health programmes and policies may work in specific contexts.To illustrate this, I highlight the key systems-level features underlying South Korea’s response to COVID-19, including the role of public investment and trust, and of democracy, equity and solidarity, in response to disease outbreaks and the overall resilience of the health system.The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in South Korea on 20 January 2020. The epidemic reached a plateau by 12 March.1 The WHO and others have praised Korea’s COVID-19 control and attributed Korea’s success mainly to two factors: (1) extensive testing using the latest molecular diagnostic kits and innovative testing strategies (eg, drive-thru and walk-thru testing) and (2) contact tracing to support effective epidemiological investigations.2 These strategies undoubtedly contributed to Korea’s COVID-19 control.3 4 However, the publicised ‘lessons from Korea’ overlook the sociopolitical context and treat these policy interventions as if they operate as depoliticised variables disconnected from the surrounding social and political processes.In other words, there is a prevailing tendency to sanitise the lessons of their political dimension and to reduce them to a matter of developing and … ER -