Introduction
In the five years since the first cases of COVID-19 were recorded in January 2020 in South Korea (hereafter Korea) and the UK, memories have begun to fade and policy and everyday life have transitioned to ‘living with Covid’ in both countries. However, whilst the world had slowly begun to establish a ‘new normal’, the impacts of the continuing war in Ukraine and the steep rise in inflation and the cost of living have continued to be felt across households and societies. As protectionism, trade wars, turmoil on global financial markets, as well as newly emerging geopolitical conflict and tensions threaten security and stability it is timely, to reflect on, explore, and analyse national and local policy responses to the recent pandemic between 2020 and 2022, and consider the short- and longer-term impacts for human security in turbulent times in the UK and Korea.
The series of papers in this special themed section is set against this backdrop and in a context whereby deepening levels of interdependencies and complexities across and between societies, economies, policy, and determinants of human security have generated new and much broader risks cascading across multiple domains of everyday life. Traditional sources of security, such as employment and the labour market, savings and assets, family, welfare, and the economic growth model itself can also now be perceived as sources of insecurity within an ‘architecture of fragility’ (Wernli et al., Reference Wernli, Böttcher, Vanackere, Kaspiarovich, Masood and Levrat2023:207; also see Kim, Oh and Kennett, Reference Kim, Oh and Kennett2025). Implications of this architecture of security for human insecurity in everyday life can be evidenced by greater exposure and vulnerability to global economic and supply chain shocks and health and environmental hazards, in combination with the individualisation of risk, fragmented labour markets, the growing diversity in employment relationships (Bekker & Leschke, Reference Bekker and Leschke2021; Lee, Reference Lee2023), the expansion of the platform economy and in-work poverty, increasing household debt, and the privatisation and under-funding of public services. As the contributions to this special themed section demonstrate, the COVID-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the scale and depth of interconnection and the multidimensionality of systemic risk (Schweizer, Reference Schweizer2019) and highlighted the importance and complexity of social protection, state capacity and social risk governance to promote and support human security.
The papers in this special themed section contribute to and further develop ongoing debates on the social policy responses to the pandemic and their impacts on people and societies (see for example Béland et al., Reference Béland, Cantillon, Hick and Moreira2021, Reference Béland, He and Ramesh2022; Greer et al., Reference Greer, Jarma, Falkenbach, Masad de Fonseca, Raj and Key2021; Cook & Ulriksen, Reference Cook and Ulriksen2021; Dorlack, Reference Dorlack2022; Edmiston et al., Reference Edmiston, Robertshaw, Gibbons, Ingold, Baumberg Geiger, Scullion, Summers and Young2021; McCall et al., Reference McCall, Rolfe, Matthews, Wallace, Manyika, Iafrati, Clark, Munro, Jolly, Cefalo and Pomati2022). The contributions draw out the uneven impact of the global pandemic and critically analyse the weaknesses and fault lines in social, economic, and political institutions, policies, and processes that have been exposed and exacerbated since 2020. They also consider more recent evidence on the longer-term impacts, societal challenges, and ‘scarring’ effects post-COVID-19 (Cerra et al., Reference Cerra, Fatas and Saxena2021), most sharply felt in terms of lives lost but also in the more persistent, long-lasting, negative, and intersecting societal impacts experienced across different dimensions of human security.
The articles draw on and integrate the concepts and frameworks of critical human security and state capacity (Hartley and Jarvis, Reference Hartley and Jarvis2020; Mazzucato and Kattel, Reference Mazzucato and Kattel2020; Mao, Reference Mao2021; Weiss and Thurbon, Reference Weiss and Thurbon2021) for understanding, explaining, and addressing policy challenges and systemic crises in turbulent times. In combination, they highlight policy reforms and strategies for sustainable futures through an ‘enabling institutional infrastructure’ (Murphy, Reference Murphy2023) that is people-centred and inclusive risk governance for critical human security (Newman, Reference Newman2010; Human Security Unit, 2016).
Critical human security, state capacity, and the pandemic in Korea and the UK
The spread and impact of COVID-19, since the declaration of a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020 began as a health crisis and quickly evolved into an economic, social, and fiscal crisis, the responses to and impacts of which were highly differentiated and variegated nationally and locally, affecting groups of people and places in very different ways. Drawing on and integrating critical human security and state capacity this series of paper seeks to explain this complexity and variegation through the exploration of linkages between state capacity and different institutional arrangements across spatial scales (regional, national/local) with the dynamics of human (in)security and how these are shaped over time in the context of coalescing crises and evolving neoliberalism (Dukelow and Kennett, Reference Dukelow and Kennett2018).
Critical human security is composed of a range of integrated dimensions of life, including health, economic, environmental, and community security, as well as personal and political freedom and underpinned by the foundational and reinforcing goals of protection and empowerment. Protection and empowerment are implemented and shaped by state capacity, which encompasses national and local institutional and public sector infrastructural power (Weiss & Thurbon, Reference Weiss and Thurbon2021: 700), as well as capabilities and policy agility to adopt the selection and mobilisation of policy instruments with the legitimacy and trust of governing institutions. Integrating these perspectives into a comparative analysis of pandemic responses and impacts in the UK and Korea has enabled us to shed light on the social and economic institutions and conditions that expose people to insecurity and how these conditions interact for groups of people in different places.
The contributions to this special themed section adopt this approach to examine and address the complex, multi-sectoral social and public policy challenges confronting societies in the aftermath of the pandemic. These challenges are further compounded by overlapping and multi-layered insecurities, with a particular regional focus on East Asia and Europe, specifically Korea and the United Kingdom. Both countries have established comprehensive welfare states and healthcare systems, providing the foundational infrastructure necessary for state capacity in ensuring human security. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), once a hallmark of the modern European welfare state, continues to deliver comprehensive healthcare to the entire population, free at the point of delivery (for the most part) despite financial constraints in recent years. In contrast, Korea’s National Health Insurance system, introduced in 1977 under an authoritarian government, guarantees universal healthcare access but has a comparatively shorter history of implementation. Given these distinct historical and political legacies, the institutional configurations and political economies of social protection differ between the two countries, shaping their respective responses to the pandemic. South Korea, one of the countries in East Asia that had early infection and detection of COVID-19, is a good example of how East Asian countries responded to the pandemic. South Korea detected the infection early and had implemented containment measures, such as restrictions on travel, by February 2020, quickly followed by 3TS (trace-test-treatment), thus avoiding lockdown. The UK, as in other European countries such as Italy and Spain, detected infection late and responded more slowly and with more stringent measures, including lockdowns. It also failed to develop an effective trace-test-treatment system, in contrast to Korea and some other European countries such as Germany and Sweden (Rajan et al., Reference Rajan, Cylus and McKee2020). However, the uneven implementation of policy responses in both countries revealed both new and longstanding structural social and health inequality and insecurity, particularly in relation to age, gender, race and ethnicity, citizenship status, and type of employment. Thus the UK and Korea provide interesting case studies for exploring comparatively the relationships between state capacity and critical human security, the differences in policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, how this has impacted on constructing constellations of risk and insecurity, and the longer-term policy challenges post-COVID-19.
Contributions to the special themed section
The special themed section begins with a broad focus initially on East Asia and Europe to provide a state-of-the-art exploration of the key concepts of state capacity and critical human security and their relevance for understanding, explaining and addressing responses to the pandemic. The notion of human security has evolved from its post-Cold War focus on military and state security to embrace a broader, people-centred approach to recognising the multidimensional and interconnected threats and social policy challenges facing households and communities. The paper by Kennett, Kwon, and Lendvai seeks to reframe the connections between human security, state capacity, and social policy, and emphasise the relationality and relativity of the concepts. It also highlights the role of power relations, intersectionality, and the racialised and gendered policy and politics of security and insecurity.
The global pandemic put the ability of states to ‘protect and empower’ under the spotlight and assumptions regarding the correlation between strong capacity and high levels of human security have been called into question. The state capacity for human security approach highlights the multidimensional challenges and well-being outcomes that welfare states should seek to address and the importance of state capacities that are collaborative, people-centred, intersectional, and have the ability to respond to negative impacts of policy choices on protection and empowerment.
The contribution from Kim, Oh, and Kennett, and article by Kennett, Lee, Kwon, and Lutz shift the focus to a more in-depth comparative analysis of South Korea and the UK. Kim et al. explore state responses to and preparations for inclusive risk governance in response to systemic risk in the UK and South Korea in the context of multiple, overlapping networks of interaction at different spatial scales. The paper argues that traditional analysis and management of risk is no longer adequate for protecting and empowering populations against systemic and cascading risks. Risk management needs to move beyond its over-emphasis on technical procedures and instead address, recognise and engage with the interlocking spheres of human security and social policy. The UK and Korea provide distinct and different examples of risk governance, coordination capacity. and ability to evolve and respond to systemic risk providing insights to inform an inclusive risk governance, state capacity, and critical human security framework.
The article by Kennett et al. draws on an integrated critical human security and state capacity approach to argue that state responses, institutional capacity and the mobilisation of policy instruments themselves shape and construct constellations of insecurity. The international comparative study between the UK and Korea highlights the differences in the scale, impact, and stringency of policy responses and state capacity in the two countries and how this in turn shaped constellations of vulnerability, risk, and insecurity.
The challenges of digitalisation and state capacity were brought into sharp focus during the pandemic in both South Korea and the UK, as was its dual role in both enhancing and compromising human security. Issues around the digital transformation of governance and public services for human security is addressed in the article by Hong, Lariviere, and Ko, in order to understand better its role in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the longer-term implications for critical human security.
The rapid and transformative implementation of various digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic proved pivotal in tackling the spread of the virus and its societal impacts, particularly in Korea. However, the comparative study also highlights disparities and uneven engagement with technology, particularly amongst vulnerable groups, in both countries and that the benefits were not felt equally by all groups of people. Whilst recognising the key role that digital technologies can play in supporting and promoting human security, the article argues that rapid expansion and adoption by states is inadequate unless its implementation is also responsive to human security concerns around privacy and data protection, access, and skills, knowledge, and experience.
The final article by Kennett, Yi, and Hong shifts the analytical and empirical focus from national to local state capacity and welfare architectures and cities to address the spatially specific nature of the pandemic and its impact. It captures and compares the roles of local social policy and social infrastructure and urban governance in promoting or challenging human security. The focus of this paper is on the metropolitan cities of Seoul and London. This multi-scalar and comparative analytical approach further demonstrates the multi-faced and integrated nature of critical human security and local state capacity and the importance of recognising and supporting urban stakeholders as front line responders, collaborators, and builders of local social infrastructure and welfare architecture for human security and sustainable cities.
The collection of articles is accompanied by a number of useful sources that have either proved foundational to the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical material utilised and discussed in each of the contributions, or provided additional resources to explore some of the concepts and issues raised more broadly and in more depth.
The contributions to this special themed section engage with and further develop research collaboration conducted by teams of researchers in South Korea and the UK as part of a UKESRC funded collaborative research project on Critical Human Security and Public Policy Challenges in a Post-Covid World: South Korea and UK, which ran from February 2022 to August 2023.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge that the papers in this special themed section draw on a project supported by the Economic and Research Council [Grant reference ES/W010739/12022], which ran from 1 February 2022 to 1 August 2023.
We would also like to acknowledge the financial support of The Global Development Institute for Public Affairs, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.
Our deepest appreciation goes to the many people in both Korea and the UK who gave their time to engage with this project, contribute to workshops, and participate in interviews.
