The COVID-19 outbreak has significant global implications to a point where it has seemingly transformed the existing international order in stark contrast to any other infectious diseases of the past, such as SARS and MERS. Such a view is owing to distinct features that have come to the surface in response to the coronavirus pandemic as follows: U.S.-China strategic competition deepening, liberal economic order shrinking, globalization regressing, authoritarian states emerging, and human rights and privacy protection norms being threatened.
Although the international community has long held the belief that cooperation between states would be well-coordinated in response to non-traditional security threats, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about paradoxical development of having reinforced an isolationist-nature ‘Our Country First’ approach such as ‘global social-distancing’ by raising countries’ boundaries. Moreover, the traditional leaders of the international order, the U.S., China, and even WHO, all have failed to exercise the leadership entrusted to them in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, a ‘K-prevention model’ has been under the global spotlight as it is evaluated as having been effective in response to the global pandemic outbreak.
To that end, this session aims to explore the possibility of universally proliferating a ‘K-prevention model’ as well as establishing a multilateral cooperation governance amidst new threats in the post-COVID-19 era, including health security (human security).