Attitude and Behavioral Responses of the South Koreans during COVID-19 Pandemic through Korean Online News

Abstract

This paper examines the attitude and behavioral responses of South Koreans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this paper is to study the attitude and behavioral responses of South Koreans during the pandemic. The researcher collected 80 related news from the news on the website Naver. The result of this study reveals that South Koreans have a negative attitude toward their family and themselves during the pandemic. The people are most anxious in aspects of finance, mental and physical health. As for the attitude toward their country and society, South Korean people have a positive attitude. That is, they are strongly proud that foreign countries have interestingly paid attention to the prevention and control of pandemics. In terms of the attitude toward the government agency and related organizations, the study found both positive and negative news. The people are satisfied with the performance of public health officers. Furthermore, Koreans have an attitude that the safety of the people in the country is more important than human rights and mostly realizes social responsibility. Besides, the people positively behave to support the country in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have been in ‘Untact’ communication.