The Korean government’s public health responses to the COVID-19 epidemic through the lens of industrial policy

The paper explores the idea that the success of the Korean government’s non-pharmaceutical interventions in response to the COVID-19 epidemic can be better understood through the lens of industrial policy framework than many descriptive public policy literatures that have merely focused on administrative efficiency. It is emphasized in this paper that the Korean government has maintained sustained R&D support, tax subsidy, and various forms of public–private partnerships to help nurture and grow domestic infant industry in such strategic industrial areas as information-communication technology, biotechnology and health care, and pharmaceutical industry for a long time, and this soft industrial policy has enabled the public health authority to implement a series of successful non-pharmaceutical public health measures to suppress and mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus.