From "new social risks" to "COVID social risks": the challenges for inclusive society in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan amid the pandemic ...
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Policy and Society, 2022, 41(2), 260–274
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/polsoc/puac001
Advance access publication date 10 February 2022
Original Research Article
From “new social risks” to “COVID social
risks”: the challenges for inclusive society
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in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
amid the pandemic
Young Jun Choi1 , Stefan Kühner2 and Shih-Jiunn Shi3
1
Department of Public Administration, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
2
Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China
3
Graduate Institute of National Development, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Corresponding author: S. Kühner, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, Lingnan University, Room 304, 3/F, Dorothy
Y.L. Wong Building, 8 Castle Peak Road, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong, China. Email: stefankuehner@LN.edu.hk
Abstract
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created tremendous hazards to people worldwide.
Incidence, hospitalization, and mortality rates have varied by individual and regional socioeconomic
indicators. However, little is known about the indirect social and economic losses following the
COVID-19 pandemic and to what extent they have disproportionately affected different groups of peo-
ple. Building on the traditional conceptualizations of “old” and “new social risks,” this article tracks
and analyzes the emerging “COVID social risks” in five critical areas: physical health, employment
and income, skills and knowledge, care, and social relationships. The article empirically examines
to what extent the manifestations of “COVID social risks” describe the makings of a new class divide
in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Finally, this article discusses whether “COVID social risks”
present a temporary or lasting phenomenon and to what extent interactions with processes of digiti-
zation and de-globalization are likely to produce similar problem pressures for East Asian governments
amid future crises. East Asian governments should facilitate individuals’ ability to absorb “COVID
social risks” and institutionalize a new welfare policy settlement that emphasizes complementarities
between the social protection, social investment, and social innovation policy paradigms.
Keywords: social risks; COVID-19; inclusive society; well-being; East Asia
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has presented a critical public health crisis as hospital-
ization and death figures began to accumulate worldwide following the first reported cases in Wuhan
on 31 December 2019. Although hopes for an end to the pandemic have been increasing with the spread
of COVID-19 vaccination, the number of confirmed cases has remained stubbornly high in many coun-
tries, warning of subsequent waves of COVID-19 infections due to mutant virus variants. As of the end
of October 2021, approximately 250 million people have been infected with COVID-19 worldwide and
nearly 5 million people have died from COVID-19 (World Health Organization, 2021).
© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact
journals.permissions@oup.comPolicy and Society 261
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Figure 1. Confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases per million of population.
Source: Ritchie et al. (2020).
Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has created much more than merely a public health crisis. Around
the world, as a result of enhanced border controls and strict social distancing measures, many indus-
tries and small businesses suffered serious losses leading to a global employment crisis and severe
reduction in working hours among employees equivalent to 100 million full-time jobs lost in 2021
(International Labor Organization [ILO], 2021). Far from being solved by temporarily reduced incidence
rates in some countries or territories, the COVID-19 pandemic is projected to contribute to global unem-
ployment of 200 million in 2022, with informal workers, women, and young people being hit particularly
hard (United Nations, 2021). In the wake of COVID-19, the World Bank estimated the first increase in
the global poverty rate since 1990 (Lakner et al., 2021).
Moreover, concerns about children’s academic performance increased sharply as schools were
closed, and the care burden of parents increased amid the necessary preparations for the homeschool-
ing of their children. About 150 countries worldwide have fully closed their schools leading to a loss of
at least three-quarters of instruction time for 200+ million pre-primary to upper-secondary students
since early 2020 (UNICEF, 2021). In addition, an estimated 35 million children under the age of five
worldwide have been left without adult supervision at home at least some of the time since the begin-
ning of COVID-19-related lockdowns and movement restrictions (Gromada et al., 2020). Furthermore,
as daycare centers and welfare facilities were closed, caring for disabled and older adults shifted to
the family to a large extent. Women especially had to find ways to combine teleworking and caring
responsibilities (Wenham, 2020).
Since its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc across the East Asian region, taking a
toll on human lives and inflicting substantial social and economic losses. Yet, as seen in Figure 1, South
Korea (hereafter Korea), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) (hereafter Hong Kong), and Tai-
wan Republic of China (hereafter Taiwan) have become international exemplars or robust public health
and community responses to COVID-19 (Gibney, 2020). This successful response to COVID-19 has partly
been attributed to the institutional memory of the previous severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) crises and contributed to a robust economic recovery in
the three East Asian societies (ADB, 2021).
Nonetheless, economic and social policy responses in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, often charac-
terized by developmental, productivist, or residual welfare structures have varied. Compared with rich262 Y. J. Choi et al.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, these East Asian govern-
ments largely refrained from expanding additional spending, only around 3% of gross domestic product
(GDP), on social purposes (International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2021; Soon et al., 2021). By comparison,
the OECD average spending on additional social policies to counter the negative social effects of COVID-
19 exceeded 6% of GDP beyond existing automatic stabilizers. Particularly, liberal welfare states, such
as the USA, Canada, and the UK, spent more than 10%, whereas Japan, a fellow East Asian country,
spent about 14%. Other fiscal measures in response to COVID-19, including corporate welfare, liquidity
support, and other above-the-line measures, remained moderate in Korea and Hong Kong compared
with liberal welfare regimes in the OECD and Japan (International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2021).
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In summary, unlike their successful response to COVID-19, the three East Asian societies appeared
lukewarm in their response to the resultant negative social and economic consequences. These policy
choices render them particularly meaningful cases to analyze the social risks experienced during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Against this background, we propose a new concept, “COVID social risks,” to illus-
trate newly evolving social risks under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing,
and associated socioeconomic transformations such as digitization and deglobalization. More precisely,
we distinguish “COVID social risks” from previous discussions of old and new social risks in the com-
parative social policy literature. Subsequently, the article reviews the emerging empirical evidence on
how COVID social risks have emerged and demonstrates to what extent they describe the makings of
a new class divide amid the pandemic. Finally, we argue that governments in Korea, Hong Kong, and
Taiwan so far have neglected some COVID social risks and discuss policy implications of the new class
divide in these three East Asian societies.
New social risks and COVID social risks
Old and new social risks
When William Beveridge (1942) pointed out the five “Giant Evils” of “Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor
and Idleness” that the British government should deal with, he considered the traditional social risks
confronted by workers and their families in industrial society. Retirement, widows’ and disability pen-
sions, unemployment benefits, and healthcare were critical social programs against these social risks.
Further efforts to conceptualize social risk began with the socioeconomic changes unleashed by dein-
dustrialization, characterized by slowed down productivity growth and increased female labor force
participation. Individual life courses have become highly complicated in the period of deindustrializa-
tion. New social risks featured a range of contingencies, including reconciling work and family life, lone
parenthood, obsolete or low skills, and insufficient social security. The declining return from higher
education has also become a new social risk (Bonoli, 2005).
New social policies emerged, including childcare and activation policies, to recalibrate existing social
structures and enhance workers’ employability to cope with the new social risks (Huber & Stephens,
2006). Specifically, although traditional social security aimed to decommodify industrial citizens, cur-
rent social services helped those exposed to new social risks re-commodify themselves in labor markets
(Pierson, 2001). In addition, old and new social risks further impacted collective mobilization; industrial
workers exposed to old social risks were solidly united, creating politically influential groups of labor
unions and left political parties. By contrast, new social risks weakened the political influence of those
vulnerable groups (Taylor-Gooby, 2005).
Despite the significant difference between old and new social risks, they share an overlapping area.
Poverty or illness, typical old social risks, prevail among those hit by the new social risks, including
employees with low skills or single parents, who would subsequently suffer economic insecurity in
old age. Moreover, marital homogamy could strengthen the “new inequality” in line with increasing
women’s labor market participation (Esping-Andersen, 2009). In addition, a lack of social mobility is
closely related to old and new social risks. The superposition between old and new social risks is even
more conspicuous in newly emerging welfare states, for example, East Asia, where fast deindustrializa-
tion occurred without establishing comprehensive welfare states to cope with old social risks. In this
respect, old social risks and new social risks are better understood from an evolutionary perspective
rather than as qualitatively distinct concepts.
COVID-19 social risks
With the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, modern welfare states are witnessing yet another wave of com-
plex socioeconomic structural changes that have intensified existing social risks and produced a new
set of social risks. At the heart of the emerging “COVID social risks” is uncertainty, as Beck’s (1999)Policy and Society 263
notion of risk society highlights. In the transition to risk society, unknown risks have emerged, which
are delocalized, incalculable, and make it difficult for policymakers to decide whom to compensate. This
transition created a “routinization of uncertainties” in which citizens have been described as “tightrope
walkers” (Jones et al., 2006). Whelan and Maitre (2008) argue that these kinds of new risks and uncertain-
ties infiltrated across broad sections of the general population. Moreover, humanly devised institutions
for reducing social risks seemed to complicate existing social risks and even produce new social risks
(Taylor-Gooby & Zinn, 2006). In this vein, we argue that COVID-19 has amplified these uncertainties and
their effects, which could last well beyond the COVID-19 period.
Several socioeconomic pressures matter in this context. The first is the threat of infectious diseases,
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which erodes the physical security of an individual’s life. The second is accelerated digitization. Expec-
tations that the knowledge-based economy and digitization would raise the standard of living for all
have almost vanished (Jessop, 2008). Instead, as non-face-to-face digitalization proceeds, changes in
the industrial structure and uncertain changes in labor markets profoundly impact individual employ-
ment, skills, and income (Vasilescu et al., 2020). The amount of jobs and specific tasks across industries
that artificial intelligence will replace is highly uncertain. Third, deglobalization, although less directly
related to COVID-19, creates an uncertain economic and political environment. Deglobalization and the
rise of nationalism are increasing financial volatility and uncertainty about the future of international
trade (Dent, 2020). This trend could not only significantly affect the labor market but also hinder social
cohesion. These structural transformations have generated profound social consequences.
These three pressures interact and produce COVID social risks, which could persist for a considerable
period of time. It is unclear when the pandemic will ultimately end, and the newly established lifestyles
will likely affect physical and mental health beyond the confines of localized outbreaks (Hall et al., 2021).
Even if the first factor, the pandemic, disappears within a few years, the uncertainty of digitization and
deglobalization that it creates implies that COVID social risks may have a lasting rather than temporary
impact on the economy, employment, skills, and social relation. Specifically, five COVID social risks have
been emerging:
1. Physical health: Everyone can be exposed to COVID-19 infection with a severe life risk. Service
and sales workers were listed among the “frontline” occupation groups with the most COVID-19
incidences in a comparative study. The others were healthcare workers, drivers and transport
workers, cleaning and domestic workers, and public safety workers (Lan et al., 2020). The greater
the likelihood of infection among these occupational groups, the greater the probability that the
health crisis will be vast and widespread.
2. Employment and income: The risk of sudden job loss has been rising due to strict lockdown and
social distancing measures (Pouliakas & Branka, 2020). Many workers and salaried employees had
no choice but to take unpaid leave due to closing businesses or increasing care responsibilities
at home. Even if they managed to retain a job, many individuals experienced a substantial loss
of income, for instance, due to reduced working hours. In these circumstances, individuals and
households are likely to face constant stress due to increased powerlessness and personal depen-
dency on employers (Donnelly & Farina, 2021). They might not be able to work in the face of severe
health risks or refuse to do risky work.
3. Knowledge and skills: Workers could go beyond the gradual de-skilling much discussed during
the post-industrial era and experience a sudden unskilling as the markets no longer require spe-
cialized skills, for example, an airplane pilot or a travel guide (Mayhew & Anand, 2020). Those
who do not know when they would become unskilled or face an income crisis are likely to have
highly reduced bargaining power in labor markets. This crisis may be exacerbated in the future if
the pandemic situation hinders the educational progress of children or creates a significant social
gradient in educational opportunities due to school closures and the adoption of online learning
(Burgess & Sievertsen, 2020).
4. Care: Social distancing and lockdown measures create uncertain care needs as parents, and par-
ticularly women, face the situation where they need to take care of their children or take care of
their families in a non-face-to-face case, as schools and welfare facilities are closed due to infec-
tion concerns (Lee & Parolin, 2021; Power, 2020). Care risk is particularly evident for single parents
or households with family members who need severe or long-term care, including adults with
disabilities and children with special educational needs. Individuals may use various care mixes264 Y. J. Choi et al.
to attempt to deal with these pressures, but increasing care work and weakening social relation-
ships would also make people more vulnerable mentally, often leading to depression, anxiety, and
anger.
5. Social relations: Many lost their social relationships because of unemployment, increased care
burdens, or loss of income. Additional psychological stressors, such as disruptions of regular
routines and separation from family and friends, have triggered various negative psychosocial
responses during pandemics (Taylor, 2019). According to the OECD (2021), the prevalence of
depression significantly increased in the wake of the pandemic. Society may also experience a
sharp decline in social capital and trust if people are disconnected from the community, poten-
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tially resulting in moral panic, excessive fear of the likelihood of infection, and reduced willingness
to adhere to preventive measures (Coroiu et al., 2020).
In essence, these “COVID social risks” have several unique features:
First, these risks are associated with omnidirectional uncertainty from various socioeconomic
pressures, whereas old social risks were associated with industrialization and new social risks were
associated with deindustrialization. For example, uncertainty caused by the pandemic and digital-
ization creates a crisis of skill and care, further developing a problem of income and relationships.
Considering that the causes are intertwined and the probability of occurrence or its aftermath is uncer-
tain, the scope of risk has become increasingly complex and deep. As a result, responding to these risks
through normal evidence-based policies has become increasingly challenging.
Second, even if the specific cause is identified, the possibility of facing a challenging problem is high
due to the complexity. Whereas old social risks were usually regarded as part of an “actuarial calculus”
and could be more easily projected into the future, new social risks were more closely preoccupied with
the so-called “risk scenarios” with various degrees of plausibility (Giddens, 1991). Despite increasing
health and social demands, COVID social risks are characterized by a sharpened lack of trust in tradi-
tional authorities, such as governments, experts, media, and existing public policies. They also raise
doubts about the validity of the knowledge(s) and the evidence these traditional authorities produce in
the social media world (Limaye et al., 2020).
Third, COVID social risks are likely to persist throughout the life course rather than manifest only
in a transition period of one’s life. As explained earlier, although COVID social risks are experienced
unequally by class and group, from infants to the elderly in care facilities, regardless of race and gender,
everyone is exposed to COVID social risks. Old social risks were focused on male breadwinners displaced
from the labor market, and new social risks were discussed, focusing on those in the transition phase
of the labor market.
Finally, the intensity of experiencing COVID social risks varies across different socio-demographic-
economic groups. Reich (2020) discussed four newly emerging layers of social class, which he labels
“The Remotes,” “The Essentials,” “The Unpaid,” and “The Forgotten.” According to his argument, the
Remotes can easily convert face-to-face jobs that they had been doing before the pandemic into non-
face-to-face positions. A wide range of professions providing knowledge or consultancy can fit here,
and their income was hardly affected if at all. Second, the Essentials are unlikely to lose their jobs
in the pandemic because they provide essential goods or services needed in daily life. However, their
occupations cannot be transformed into non-face-to-face work; hence, they face a higher possibility of
experiencing a health or care crisis. Demand for the work of the Unpaid is reduced, but the possibility
for non-face-to-face operation is limited, leading to an unemployment crisis and facing the precipice
of unskilled labor. Some of the Unpaid, including those in the aviation and tourism industries, possess
highly specialized skills that suddenly became obsolete with the COVID-19 crisis and ensuing lock-
downs. Finally, the Forgotten are outside of public concerns even during the pandemic. For instance,
unregistered migrants in construction sites or service sector jobs experience a more multifaceted severe
risk without social support from the public sector. The following section provides a closer look at the
emerging COVID social risks in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
COVID-19 social risks in three East Asian societies
Employment and income
Among the three, Korea was the most severely affected by COVID-19, forcing the government to imple-
ment strict social distancing and lockdown. A survey from May 2021 indicated that nearly 50% ofPolicy and Society 265
households experienced more than a 10% reduction of household income and 25% experienced unpaid
leave or unemployment; about 20% directly experienced business closures or decreased sales of 30%
or more (Cho, 2021). Yet, the current social insurance system did not sufficiently cover the most vul-
nerable, such as the self-employed, atypical workers and platform workers (Cho, 2021). This loophole
motivated the central and local governments in Korea to introduce various emergency disaster assis-
tance allowances to those concerned. As a result, emergency relief measures were implemented twice
in 2020 and three times as of October 2021. However, according to the survey, only around 12% of those
who were unemployed or furloughed due to the COVID-19-related economic downturn benefited from
the existing employment insurance system. Even including targeted emergency relief allowances, the
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beneficiary rate was only about 22%. Many of those who were unable to work due to the pandemic have
shifted to the delivery sector where demand has surged. Still, the wages and working conditions here
have not improved due to harsh competition. Women have been more affected in terms of jobs and
care burden than men (Y. Choi et al., 2020).
A similar scenario was evident in Taiwan. The COVID-19 outbreak hit industrial sectors such as avi-
ation, travel, retail services, and gastronomy hardest. The reported cases of furlough or even layoff
by enterprises in these sectors have spiked due to the negative economic consequences of the pan-
demic crisis. In its response to the pandemic crisis, primary social policies in Taiwan have been to
bail out stranded sectors to evade mass dismissal and free vulnerable workers and their families from
livelihood difficulties (Soon et al., 2021). The policy discourse revolved around the concentration of
resources on those in need and not on benefits for all. As the damage incurred by the COVID-19 out-
break was confined, the government had much leeway to allocate additional resources on top of the
existing programs of (un-)employment protection and social relief. Almost all the bailout programs
and assistance benefits were devised to target certain vulnerable groups (i.e., unemployed or poor
households) with means tests. The only one–off universal benefit featured the Triple Stimulus Vouchers
(in 2020) and another Quintuple Stimulus Vourchers (in 2021), but even this measure carried the policy
goal of boosting domestic consumption and reviving the economy.
In Hong Kong, the employment and income crisis due to COVID-19 unfolded against the backdrop of
an economic crisis that had already begun to take shape since the political turmoil and mass protests
starting in June 2019 (Hartley & Jarvis, 2020). Hong Kong’s per capita GDP contracted by −2.0% in 2019,
followed by a further slump of −6.1% in 2020; the unemployment rate rose to a peak of around 6.5%
by late 2020 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2021). Not surprisingly, it was the retail,
accommodation, and food services, together with the construction industry, that were most severely
hit, and service and sales workers in these industries with lower skills faced the highest risk of unem-
ployment. Despite the Hong Kong government’s provision of economic stimulus and wage subsidies
through the newly introduced Employment Support Scheme, the overall wages and incomes dropped
particularly for households in the lowest decile groups. Consequently, the official poverty statistics
before taxes and benefits reached a 12-year high at 1.653 million individuals (23.6% of the total popu-
lation) during the pandemic (Government of the Hong Kong SAR, 2021). Although the majority of the
newly unemployed did not benefit from the existing social safety net in Hong Kong (Oxfam Hong Kong,
2021), the post-intervention poverty statistics reduced to 0.554 million individuals (7.9% of the total
population), largely attributed to the various temporary cash relief measures launched by the govern-
ment in response to COVID-19, including those under the Anti-Epidemic Fund, the $10,000 Cash Payout
Scheme, extra allowance to recipients of social security payments, and cash measures under the Com-
munity Care Fund (Government of the Hong Kong SAR, 2021). Calls on the government to extend more
support for the unemployed have become increasingly noticeable.
Knowledge and skills
In 2020, the number of employees in Korea considerably reduced in most industrial sectors except
in public administration, construction, and domestic work, compared to that in 2019 (Korea Labor
Institute, 2020). Owing to strict social distancing and lockdown measures, many workers became dis-
placed, thus becoming the Unpaid who cannot use their skills in the non-face-to-face economy. In
particular, some skilled workers in the art and cultural sectors and the travel industries experienced
“unskilling” as the market demand disappeared. Actors, concert staff, travel guides, and pilots not
only lost their jobs but had to acquire new skills to survive. Although Korea implemented individual266 Y. J. Choi et al.
training accounts with a maximum of $5000 per year, short-term training was not very helpful for the
unemployed (Y. Choi et al., 2020).
The pandemic has also changed the labor market landscape in Taiwan. Public sector employees
and high-skilled professionals took advantage of working from home and managed to keep their jobs
more or less uninterrupted. By contrast, workers required face-to-face interaction that bore the brunt
of the economic consequences: about 30% of the workforce in those sectors were either furloughed
or dismissed from their positions, according to an online survey (Future City, 2021). Skills inequality
is equally pronounced in sectors that have benefited from the pandemic. For instance, the necessity
of social distancing has boosted the demand for product consignment, stimulating the growth of the
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Internet economy, such as the digital retail industry and delivery sector. However, dispatch drivers’
working conditions and wage benefits—often based on irregular employment—have remained far from
decent. Almost 70% of these workers had no access to statutory labor insurance and 44% of them
worked over the legal limit of 12 hr/day (Taiwan Labour Front, 2021).
The employment crisis did not affect all Hong Kongers in the same way. Although accommodation
and food services were most severely hit amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic activity in the
information and communications and financing and insurance sectors continued to increase (Hong
Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2021). Underemployment increased threefold from 2019 to
2020, reflecting an increasing underutilization of productive capacity of the local employed population
as workers with high skills ended up working in low-paying or part-time work. No less than 17.5% of
employed persons in Hong Kong worked less than 35 hr in the final quarter of 2020, whereas 14.1%
worked for 60 hr or more (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2021).
In Korea, face-to-face classes were suspended or schools were highly limited across the country.
This situation has produced two significant difficulties. First, a substantial number of children sitting
in front of a computer without parent supervision have been in arrears with learning. According to
Seoul Education Policy Institute (2021), compared with 2019, the proportion of middle-level performing
students with scores 60–80 has considerably decreased in 2020 whereas the share of high-level and low-
level performing students has increased. Second, about 15–20% of children had difficulties accessing
the Internet or obtaining a computer (Cho, 2021). Without proper state intervention, the academic gap
between students has further widened (Seoul Education Policy Institute, 2021).
Online learning in Taiwan was not implemented until mid-May 2021, after a new pandemic out-
break that lasted 2 months. Although its negative impact on students’ learning was limited, the digital
divide between middle-to-high-income and low-income families and between urban and rural areas,
has become salient. The government has done little in this regard, including insufficient infrastructure
funding and poor childcare support in remote rural areas. A survey revealed that, of the 303 respondent
schools, over 53% lacked the necessary Internet equipment and over 40% of their students had to learn
online alone (Child Welfare League Foundation, 2021). Akin to Korea, the pandemic has exacerbated
educational inequality.
In Hong Kong, several studies suggest that students were at risk of being held back in their educa-
tional progress due to the adoption of online learning. For example, more than three out of four parents
of Hong Kong kindergarten and primary school students raised concerns about their children’s online
learning progress and ample screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic (Lau & Lee, 2021). Despite the
early implementation of an assistance program to support low-income families with the purchase of
electronic devices and Internet subscriptions, only between 9% and 14% of students managed to com-
plete online learning independent from their parents. Among the surveyed students of the eight public
universities in Hong Kong, more than 60% questioned the effectiveness of online courses compared
with face-to-face classes. Around half reported that online learning negatively impacted their study
time and efficiency and listed an unstable Internet connection among the main challenges they faced
in their online learning (Xiong et al., 2020).
Care burden
In Korea, since the government implemented a firm lockdown policy to contain the COVID-19 pan-
demic spread, schools, childcare facilities, and community welfare facilities were closed. Under these
circumstances, 27% of adults reported that their burden of care increased (Cho, 2021). Childcare became
an arduous task for working parents. Although the government issued childcare coupons for support,
this was accessible only to families with children under 7 years of age. As many adult care-relatedPolicy and Society 267
services have been suspended or closed, those in need and their families faced significant challenges
(B. Kim, 2021). Even those in the care facility could not meet their families and lived in isolation due to
lockdown. Yet, the government gave little attention to this issue.
In the care sector in Taiwan, the pandemic development brought about a shortage in care provision.
Although the government initiated the long-term care pilot program in 2007 to establish a comprehen-
sive care provision net, the capacity enhancement of public care fell short. As a result, many families
turned to migrant care workers from Southeast Asia for support. Unfortunately, the pandemic outbreak
in Southeast Asia dealt a blow to those families in need, as the Taiwanese Government suspended the
travel permit for migrant workers from pandemic-stricken countries such as Indonesia in December
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2020 (and later lifted this restriction in May 2021). Under these circumstances, the care burden fell
firmly on the shoulders of the immediate families. The same case applied to families with childcare
needs. Grandparents frequently pitched in to take care of their grandchildren during the pandemic.
Otherwise, parents struggled to find resources that can support work–family balance.
Hong Kong did not register any significant outbreak in residential care homes or other long-term
care facilities, mainly due to the issuance of strict operation guidelines by Hong Kong’s Social Wel-
fare Department to nongovernmental organizations in January 2020. Within long-term facilities, the
visit rights of family members and volunteers were terminated. However, some care homes success-
fully used online technology (e.g., Zoom and Facetime) to maintain residents’ social relationships (Lum
et al., 2020). Moreover, the care crisis during the pandemic became clear when considering the mental
health of parents who supervised their children’s home learning. Tso et al. (2020) found that psycho-
logical problems during the school closures were exceptionally high among Hong Kong children with
special educational needs and single-parent and low-income families. Although parental stress in dual-
earner-carer households was lower than that in single-parent households, the stress did not vary by
socioeconomic status. Hence, most parents asked for more interactive online learning tools for children
and desired more flexible work arrangements and government subsidies (Lau & Lee, 2021).
Social relationships
During the pandemic, social isolation due to social distancing and the risks mentioned above have
aggravated mental health problems dubbed as “Corona Blues” in Korean society (Medical Observer,
2020). It is closely related to economic hardship. For example, 41% of people answered that they avoided
meeting other people because of financial reasons (Cho, 2021). The prevalence of depression increased
in almost all OECD countries in 2020, and the rate of 36.8% was the highest in Korea (OECD, 2021). In
addition, the National Health Insurance Corporation (Medical Observer, 2020) reported that, compared
with 2015, depression treatment rose by 40% and unspecified anxiety disorder treatment increased
by 30% in 2020. Although mental health services for confirmed cases and their families have existed,
policies for those experiencing mental stress due to social distancing and COVID social risks have been
rarely mentioned in the Korean public discourse.
The problem of pandemic-related social isolation in Taiwan has been comparatively mild throughout
2020, thanks to the effective containment measures and overall low COVID-19 infection rate. Even the
implementation of tightening measures following the uptick in the number of confirmed cases during
May 2021 has been far from strict lockdown. Their adverse effects on social relations remained moder-
ate. However, vulnerable groups such as people with disabilities have been hit harder, as their limited
mobility was now further constrained. Echoing World Health Organization’s disability considerations
during the COVID-19 outbreak, the National Human Rights Commission Taiwan urged the government
to pay attention to the multiple vulnerabilities faced by these people (NHRC, 2021). However, little
progress has taken place in this area.
An online survey conducted only 36 hr after the first confirmed COVID-19 case in Hong Kong sug-
gested a high level of concern about COVID-19 (97%), and more than half of respondents indicated that
their daily routines had been significantly affected (56%) (Kwok et al., 2020). A later study suggested a
negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Hong Kongers’ mental health: respondents who were worried
about being infected by COVID-19, not having access to enough surgical masks, and not being able to
work from home were more likely to experience depression and anxiety (Choi et al., 2020). By May 2020,
another online survey suggested that 65.6% of respondents reported poor mental health at a clinical
level (Tso & Park, 2020). On the basis of a study of a representative sample of Hong Kong Chinese resi-
dents aged 15 years or older, Hou et al. (2021) found that COVID-19-related stress was associated with268 Y. J. Choi et al.
Table 1. New social divides in three East Asian societies during the pandemic.
COVID social risks Evidence from South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
Physical health Increased risk of illness:
For the general population specifically healthcare workers, construction workers,
drivers and transport workers, cleaning and domestic workers, and public safety
workers
Employment and income Increased risk of unemployment, reduced working hours, and unpaid leave:
For employees specifically in the travel, catering, accommodation, entertainment,
and retail industries
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Within those industries:
For self-employed, atypical, and low-value-added sales and service workers, pres-
sures are exacerbated by limited access to employment insurance and social
safety net
Skills and knowledge Increased skills gap and unskilling:
For women and young people due to not being able to retain skills by securing
(re)employment; for the “unpaid” specifically due to lack of market demands or
inability to revert to non-face-to-face working environment
Increased educational divide:
For children and young people specifically from low-income background due to
online connectivity issues, lacking access to adequate electronic learning devices,
limited study space at home, higher likelihood of unsupervised learning at home,
and with special education needs
Care Increased familization risks:
For families with children and adults specifically with special needs due to abrupt
changes in care mix (homeschooling, suspension of adult care-related services,
and suspension of travel permits for domestic workers)
Increased care burden:
For families with children due to concerns about children’s learning progress,
changing sleep patterns, and ample screen time; particularly pronounced for
single parents and low-income families
Social relations Increased loneliness:
For adults specifically in long-term care facilities due to cancellation of visitation
rights; for the “unpaid” due to avoidance of social contact due to economic
hardships
Increased psychosocial symptoms:
For the general population due to clinical depression, anxiety, and stress specifically
for those facing financial vulnerability
anxiety and depression. This association was particularly prevalent among Hong Kong persons with
fewer savings and housing ownership.
Discussion
This paper aimed to track and analyze a new type of social risk, conceptualized as “COVID social risks.”
We posited that COVID social risks appear in a different context, affect other risk groups, generate
different policy responses, and utilize different delivery mechanisms than “old” and “new” social risks
widely discussed in the literature (see Table 1). By considering three East Asian societies with very
different COVID-19 trajectories, we collected empirical evidence to suggest that COVID social risks
have contributed to the emergence of new social divides. We further argued that COVID social risks
could broadly be classified into five sub-components, some of which (e.g., unemployment, precarity,
and familization) present a deepening of preexisting challenges for policymakers, whereas others have
manifested in ways that were unprecedented in the modern history of the welfare state (e.g., sudden
unskilling, technology-induced educational divides, and increased care burden due to homeschooling),
or at least not been in the center of attention of contemporary social policy analysis (e.g., infectious dis-
ease, loneliness, and psychosocial well-being). Table 1 summarizes the most significant manifestations
of COVID social risks as highlighted in the discussions of Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.Policy and Society 269
Existing social safety nets in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan were generally ill-prepared to cater
to households most affected by employment and income losses due to COVID-19. Yet, employees in
the industrial sectors most affected were not hit harder due to specific life-course contingencies or
insufficient skills but because they engaged in particular industries, at varying levels of skills, which
benefited from globalization. Such sectors include aviation, accommodation, gastronomy, and travel.
Within the sectors that were hit hardest due to the COVID-19-related lockdown, quarantine, and social
distancing measures, the self-employed, atypical, and low-value-added service workers saw the highest
risks of unemployment, loss of working hours, and increased competition due to crowding out, thus
deepening existing pressures of precarity. In addition, the reviewed evidence suggests that women and
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young people perceived more difficulties retaining their skills by securing re-employment.
Low or obsolete skills are not the only determining factor of individuals’ and households’ vulnera-
bility to COVID social risks. In fact, in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, frontline workers who possessed
highly sought after, even critical, skills were most directly exposed to health risks related to COVID-19.
Moreover, school closures and the shift to online classes resulted in an increasing divergence in the
learning experiences specifically of children and young people from low-income family backgrounds.
Although all children suffered from the transition to online learning to some extent, the circumstances
tended to vary by the extent to which they struggled with online connectivity issues (the most vulner-
able relying on phone cards which easily exceeded data limits rather than having access to broadband
connection at home), access to inadequate electronic learning devices, inadequate study space at home,
and unsupervised learning at home. A significant social gradient in educational achievement due to
COVID-19 may increase future labor and skills gaps.
Directly related to students’ online learning experiences in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan across
all levels of education was the increase of parental stress due to concerns about children’s learning
progress and their extensive use of screen time. These negative impacts on parents are pertinent in East
Asia societies, in which parents have placed a comparatively high premium on the educational attain-
ment of their children as a means to secure their upward social mobility. The employment/income
and skills/knowledge dimensions of COVID social risks, thereby, interlinked with increased familiza-
tion risks for parents, particularly women, who bore the brunt of the overlapping challenges of abrupt
changes in the care mix. Parental stress relating to an increased care burden was found to be most
pronounced in families with children with special educational needs and among low-income families.
Particularly, single-parent households, independent from their labor market position and skills profiles,
struggled to respond to mandatory homeschooling, work-at-home orders, and the closures of welfare
and care facilities.
The care pressures increased familization risks in stark contrast to the prolonged loneliness and
negatively affected social relationships amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite the absence of a fully-
fledged lockdown across the three East Asian societies, loneliness increased among adults in long-term
care facilities due to the cancellation of visitation rights to care facilities even by family members. Some
individuals that were directly affected by economic hardship avoided meeting friends and family out-
side the home due to the shame of losing employment in societies marked by a persistently strong
work ethic. A voluntary reduction of mobility outside the home was evidenced due to the strong com-
munity response to COVID-19 in Hong Kong. Although the pandemic started by threatening individuals’
physical health, the emerging evidence suggests that it contributed to a severe mental health crisis with
clinical depression, anxiety, and stress on the rise within the general public but particularly pronounced
among financially vulnerable individuals.
The COVID social risks can be summarized by going back to Reich’s (2020) suggestion of a new class
divide in the three East Asian societies. Although the income and jobs of “The Remotes” adapted rela-
tively quickly within an intact and even accelerating digital environment, individuals in the other three
groups were variously forced to work offline, reduce working hours, deal with increased care respon-
sibilities, or lost their jobs, creating new societal divides that neither policy addressing “old” or “new
social risks” had to address. In this perspective, accelerated digitization has essentially allowed spe-
cific individuals (highly skilled, white-collar, and men) to circumvent COVID social risks and, in some
cases, even let them have more work autonomy than before the COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, limited
ability to spend money for these “Remotes” has meant that they managed to increase their savings dur-
ing the COVID-19 lockdown, likely contributing to further wealth inequality in highly financialized and
asset-based welfare societies (Wong, 2017).270 Y. J. Choi et al.
Table 2. Classification of social risks.
Old social risks New social risks COVID social risks
Contexts Industrialization, Ageing, Dein- Infectious disease, Social distancing,
Urbanization dustrialization, Digitization, Deglobalization
Globalization
Risk groups Industrial workers Young people, Frontline workers and face-to-face
and their families Women, People with service sector (Essentials), Unem-
low skills, Minorities ployed/unskilled workers and the
self-employed (Unpaid), People with
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care needs, domestic helpers, and
migrants (Forgotten)
Policy Decommodification Cost-containment, Recovery, Mitigation, Preparation
responses Recalibration,
Recommodification
Delivery Social security, Activation, Economic stimulus, Skills retention
mechanisms Employment Defamilization and renewal, Emergency relief and
protection compensation
Policy Social protection Social protection, Social protection, Social investment,
paradigms Social investment Social innovation
Among the highest risk groups of being infected by COVID-19 were frontline workers, that is, “the
Essentials.” By contrast, the plight of “the Unpaid” was closely related to the dynamics of deglobaliza-
tion and the non-face-to-face economy that unfolded as part of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time
of writing, there are debates whether a second wave of deglobalization practices will follow in step
with calls worldwide to “build back better,” for example, by protecting national interests by producing
certain goods and services within national borders. Whether such practices might prolong or alleviate
the effects of deglobalization on unemployment and underemployment in the travel, accommodation,
gastronomy, aviation, and transport industries is a moot point. What seems inevitable is that the issue
of the “Unpaid” may remain even after any potential reopening of international travel and the loosening
of border controls and quarantine restrictions.
Directly related to the above, there is a more general question of whether social distancing measures
may affect members of “The Essentials,” “The Unpaid,” and “The Forgotten” in the medium and longer
term. For instance, some of the stressors such as homeschooling and isolation may be solved once social
distancing measures will be relaxed. However, others, such as the emerging labor and skills gaps, espe-
cially among women and young people, and the educational divide that has left children from specific
family backgrounds more likely to fall behind academically will have longer-lasting effects. Besides,
increased familization risks during the COVID-19 outbreak are bound to have a lasting impact on
gender roles within families. Therefore, young families’ post-COVID-19 childbearing wishes and behav-
iors will have to be studied carefully in follow-up studies. This is particularly the case in Korea (0.9),
Taiwan (0.99), and Hong Kong (1.1), which all had notoriously low fertility rates even before the
COVID-19 pandemic (World Bank, 2021).
Answers to some of the above questions will determine whether worsening psychosocial symp-
toms, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, among “The Essentials,” “The Unpaid,” and particularly
“The Forgotten” will return to pre-COVID-19 levels or continue to worsen even after the lives in East
Asian societies have returned to a degree of post-COVID-19 normalcy. Finally, much will rely on East
Asian governments’ approach to respond to the new social divides and the new class structure due to
COVID-19. We briefly turn to these responses as part of our conclusion.
Conclusion: policy implications
The three “productivist” East Asian societies have developed and reformed their welfare states dif-
ferently during the last two decades (e.g., see Yang & Kühner, 2020). For example, while Korea has
introduced comprehensive care policies for the elderly and children, Hong Kong has expanded its social
policies within its existing social structures. Yet, social policies for the working-age population, who suf-
fered the most during the pandemic, have not fully matured in all three societies. Therefore, given thePolicy and Society 271
economic shock unleashed by the pandemic crisis, governments in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan rolled
out various social policy measures to help people brace for livelihood hardships. They did so directly via
temporary emergency relief or indirectly by protecting the labor market from mass dismissal via corpo-
rate wage subsidies for employment protection and active labor market measures (Danielli et al., 2021).
Yet, as highlighted throughout the article, these policies did not reach many of those who experienced
the most severe risks, such as the self-employed, atypical, and low-value-added sales and service work-
ers, and also children and students. Also, these policies primarily focused on only two out of the five
types of COVID social risks: physical health and employment and income. By contrast, policies directly
alleviating new social divides regarding skills and knowledge, care, and social relationships were largely
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overlooked.
Digitization and the extension of the non-face-to-face economy accelerated by COVID-19 together
with possible deglobalization and persistent infectious disease could strengthen, instead of reduce,
COVID social risks. As existing social security systems have proven insufficient to meet employment and
income risks, governments in Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan should institutionalize social policies to
respond systematically to COVID social risks beyond emergency disaster relief measures. For example,
unlike these East Asian societies, policy efforts by the American welfare state stand out. The size of the
US federal government policy budget for the pandemic, $4.9 trillion, has already surpassed the total
Federal government spending in 2019, $4.4 trillion (T. Kim, 2021). Furthermore, the government has
prepared to introduce a “historic” social spending plan including various social protection and social
investment measures, particularly for children and young people. Indeed, the new social divides suggest
that more, rather than less, social protection and social investment are necessary to catch up on the
social mobility losses caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. The reorganization of social security and social
investment will give individuals stability by reducing uncertainty throughout the life course. It will
equally enable individuals in their responses to risks.
In addition to thick social protection and social investment, COVID social risks require social inno-
vation, that is, bottom-up social policy initiatives focusing on families, schools, and communities (see
Table 2). Research has increasingly shown the need to enhance “protective health assets” emphasizing
the sense of belonging and autonomy support within families, schools, and neighborhoods (Morgan et
al., 2010). Crises of social care, social relationships, and skills cannot be solved only with traditional
bureaucratic top-down approaches in East Asia. In fact, in the absence of the central government’s
attention in Korea, various non-governmental organisations (NGOs), welfare centers, and social enter-
prises have tried to solve the problems of social isolation or care through new social relationships and
technologies. In addition, digital education for children and adults through social value creation activ-
ities by for-profits companies is worth noting. In Hong Kong, the local government has taken a more
direct approach investing in a Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Fund (in 2013) and
Impact Incubator (2015) supporting over 100 social innovation projects. Recent calls of funding appli-
cations have specifically called for projects emphasizing innovative solutions to the issues of mental
health and well-being amid the ongoing pandemic. Given the nature of COVID social risks, that is, “deep
uncertainty,” the policy response requires diversity and creativity, instead of the uniform response.
Hence, co-production and collaborative governance, in which citizens are directly engaged, become
increasingly crucial in the post-COVID welfare state.
The critical question will be whether East Asian welfare states can create a new politics of social sol-
idarity and, subsequently, overcome its traditional residual and bureaucratic approach toward social
policy using the “window of opportunity” that COVID-19 presents. The theoretical literature in compar-
ative social policy analysis suggests that challenging times either trigger structural change or motivate
institutionally bounded, rule satisficing policymakers to revert to “old habits” (Chung & Thewissen,
2011). Also, recent studies emphasize the role of politics in policy responses against the pandemic, e.g.,
in the cases of the United States and Canada (Béland et al., 2021; T. Kim, 2021). Yet, so far, COVID-19
has not been the game changer in terms of the East Asian social policy responses that commentators
initially expected, despite a changing policy discourse focusing on increased universalism and basic
income in South Korea and to a lesser extent in Taiwan and a willingness of policymakers in Hong
Kong—for the first time—to run a fiscal deficit in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new policy discourse around the new social divides following the COVID-19 crisis may poten-
tially become the catalyst for a discussion about a new post-COVID welfare state in East Asia. Such
a discourse would be well-advised to emphasize “COVID social risks” as these are what have set theYou can also read
