COVID Non-Conformity via the Korean National Petition: Citizens’ Responses to Pandemic Biopolitical Social Control

The current study examines the changing discourse around COVID non-conformity and pandemic disobedience in South Korea through the lenses of biopower and social control. Using a thematic analysis, this paper analyzes official online petition data collected on the Korean government’s National Petition platform. The research interprets Korean citizens’ views on non-conformity to South Korea’s COVID-19 mandates by examining their personal online petitions. The results demonstrate that these petitions, which protest various COVID-19 restrictions (e.g., mandatory vaccinations, social distancing rules) and circulate counter-narratives to question the factuality of the government’s COVID-19 messaging, serve as citizens’ direct responses to the biopowered social control measures that the government introduced during the pandemic. Specifically, such policies and their means of enforcement are used to perform biopolitics and dataveillance on citizens (e.g., recording citizens’ phone numbers and/or other personal information before they enter restaurants). Using Korean e-petition data that addresses national COVID-19 mandates, this paper states implications regarding the role of online petitions and citizens’ (non-)conformity to ongoing public health crisis restrictions.