Enhancing mixed accountability for state-society synergy: South Korea’s responses to COVID-19 with ambidexterity governance

This essay is undertaken to analyze South Korea’s successful strategies in tracing promptly and dealing properly with the corona pandemic. The “K-Quarantine” model can be identified as a combined total package of state-society synergy, equipped with a series of critical factors, such as institutionalized learning effects from MERS, the government leadership inherited from Korea’s development state in the past, civic engagements with voluntary and transparent channels, high level of medical and ICT technology, and mixed accountability between coercive governance and adaptive governance. The Korean model, despite its successful achievements, can neither be exported nor imitated by the Global South, since it is uniquely home-grown within Korea’s specific contexts and domestic multi-stakeholders involved in mixed accountability.