When the illiberal and the neoliberal meet around infectious diseases: an examination of the MERS response in South Korea

Abstract

This paper investigates infectious disease mismanagement as a way of understanding the mixture of neoliberal and illiberal governance in public health. While acknowledging the significant role of neoliberalization in public health, we call for tracing geographies of illiberalism in relation to various actors, and through various scales and processes of governance, such as private power and state absence. Through a case study of the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) throughout South Korea in 2015, this research demonstrates how neoliberal transformations in public health and illiberal practices of disease management allowed a severe outbreak of MERS, while being of benefit to a few private actors. In the MERS response, state absence via non-response such as cover-ups and censorship exacerbated state violence such as drastic quarantine and othering. Further, the South Korean government–chaebol nexus has profoundly privatized both disease management and public health, as well as intensified the responsibilization of individuals. By explaining how illiberal and neoliberal processes and particular actors came to matter in politics of infectious diseases in Korea, this paper contributes to the sociopolitical understanding of infectious diseases and public health in a mixture of authoritarianism and neoliberalism.