[The Editors' Verdict] Social Values After the End of COVID-19

Professor Park Juyong, Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

[Juyong Park, Professor at the Graduate School of Culture Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology] The concept of hysteresis is used in physics and economics. Hysteresis refers to the "memory effect," where complex systems such as materials composed of countless atoms or societies made up of many people are influenced not only by the present but also by the sustained impact of the past.

A typical example in nature is the shape of magnetization that occurs when a material like iron is placed next to a magnet, which depends not only on the magnet currently nearby but also on magnets it was exposed to in the past. In economics, a representative example is the phenomenon where sunk costs, which cannot be recovered, continue to influence business decisions.

Our near-future society is highly likely to experience hysteresis influenced continuously by the COVID-19 situation. This does not simply mean a pessimistic view that COVID-19 will never end. Over the past 100 years, we have lived with pandemics that periodically emerged and then ended, such as the 1918 Spanish flu (50 million deaths), the 1957-1958 Asian flu (11 million deaths), the 1968 Hong Kong flu (1 million deaths), and the 2009 swine flu (200,000 deaths), so we can be confident that COVID-19 will eventually come to an end.

The important point that hysteresis teaches us is that the post-COVID-19 society can be shaped by the actions we take now.

Historical studies on the 14th-century pandemic, the Black Death, which is estimated to have killed 50 million people, show that the drastically reduced population allowed survivors to enjoy more abundant resources and higher wages. Europe experienced the end of serfdom. There was also a major shift in industry from labor-intensive grain cultivation to pastoralism, where one shepherd could manage several sheepdogs. While the Black Death provided an opportunity to demonstrate human adaptability to new environments, it also played a role in persecution against Jews, foreigners, ronin, pilgrims, and Romani (Gypsies) under accusations of "responsibility for causing the Black Death." The Jewish community, which suffered less from the Black Death due to superior hygiene practices, was instead falsely accused of causing the plague and faced destruction.

What these historical facts imply is that in crisis situations like pandemics, people can engage in dangerous behaviors based on prejudice and ignorance. The already destroyed Jewish communities and many murdered pilgrims experienced extreme hysteresis from which they could never recover even after the Black Death ended.

As winter approaches, the feared "resurgence of COVID-19" has not yet appeared in our country, and news that the economy is growing again offers some consolation. However, until just before COVID-19, our society was noisy with signs that raised concerns about the retreat of important democratic values and rationality. Among those who felt disgusted by corruption and longed for a new society, some gave up hope, seeing the repeated corruption and scandals of the ruling class and the repeated failures of policies that ignored the people's voices, which increased social burdens. Meanwhile, concerns are growing again that the pandemic, by restricting the right to freely gather and voice opinions unlike in the past, is being exploited to make it more difficult to seek truth and solve problems.

We must be vigilant against living in a society that has regressed even more than before after the pandemic ends, by not listening to these concerns about the erosion of the fundamental values of democratic society.