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The purpose of this paper is to examine the case of the disaster involving the South Korean ferry, Sewol; offer policy implications; and point to the difficulty of collaboration in the functioning of the national disaster management system.

The government network approach of this paper is adopted in order to study how to link different policy actors, how to deal with disaster issues in their networking, and how to produce social-political resilience. This paper explores why the national incident management system was not working properly in terms of “governance networking”, and focuses on changes that have been made to the legal system and the government organizational system since 2000.

The principle results of the analysis are as follows: first, the collaboration between organizations that existed at the time of the accident focused only on sharing resources, and service delivery involved little connection between organizations. Second, assessment of the scale of the disaster was not carried out correctly because of dysfunctional relations between government network organizations and disaster victims, which affected both sides’ awareness of policy issues and priorities.

This paper found that an integrated disaster management framework was not available, and activities were carried out for the sake of form. Also, no governance network for collaboration had been systematically built up, and there was also little collaboration between public and private organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a newly initiated strategy for international cooperation in criminal justice; specifically, the facilitation of a “Korean Desk” between the Philippines and the Republic of Korea, as a case of successful collaboration.

International efforts to formulate and implement the Korean Desk are reviewed, by collecting legal and administrative literature on its implementation.

The Korean Desk, as a newly implemented strategy to handle the increasing incidence of crime by and against Koreans in the Philippines, showed that direct communication and collaboration between police agencies significantly increased effectiveness. Creating the Korean Desk greatly assisted the resolution of criminal matters including extradition, cyber-crime, murder, robbery and others that involved Korean suspects and offenders in Korea and Philippines. The paper describes how the implementation of the Korean Desk evolved, the different roles of the Korean Desk and the police consul, and the substantial, positive outcomes of the project.

Law-enforcement agencies are constantly formulating new approaches to enhance international anti-crime efforts. The successful collaboration described in this paper provides new insights and ideas for how, through close cooperation, agencies can benefit from, and enhance, those efforts. The paper shows how direct communication between the Korean Desk and local police in the Philippines can facilitate investigations, making them efficient and timely. Evaluation of the Korean Desk suggests that it has greatly contributed to international law enforcement.

The overall steps for formulating the Korean Desk strategy and implementing it are examined.

The aim of this study is to investigate people's information practices as the SARS-CoV-2 virus took hold in the UK. Of particular interest is how people transition into newly created pandemic information environments and the ways information literacy practices come into view.

The qualitative research design comprised one-to-one in-depth interviews conducted virtually towards the end of the UK's first lockdown phase in May–July 2020. Data were coded and analysed by the researchers using constant comparative and situated analysis techniques.

Transition into new pandemic information environments was shaped by an unfolding phase, an intensification phase and a stable phase. Information literacy emerged as a form of safeguarding as participants engaged in information activities designed to mitigate health, legal, financial and well-being risks produced by the pandemic.

Time constraints meant that the sample from the first phase of this study skewed female.

Findings establish foundational knowledge for public health and information professionals tasked with shaping public communication during times of crisis.

This paper contributes to understandings of the role that information and information literacy play within global and long-term crises.

This is one of the first studies to explore information practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Until recently, the business environment was characterized by a world in which nations were more connected than ever before. Unfortunately, the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has virtually ended the borderless and globalized world we were accustomed to. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic at a news conference in Geneva on March 11, 2020. The multifaceted nature of this invisible virus is impacting the world at many levels, and this unprecedented pandemic may best be characterized as an economic and health war against humanity. More international cooperation is crucial for effectively dealing with the present pandemic (and future pandemics) because all nations are vulnerable, and it is highly unlikely that any pandemic would affect only one country. Therefore, this case study takes a sociological approach, examining various social institutions and cultural facets (i.e., government, press freedom, information technology [IT] infrastructure, healthcare systems, and institutional collectivism) to understand how South Korea is handling the crisis while drawing important implications for other countries. All aspects of how Korea is handling COVID-19 may not be applicable to other countries, such as those with fewer IT infrastructures and less institutional collectivism. However, its methods still offer profound insights into how countries espousing democratic values rooted in openness and transparency to both domestic and worldwide communities can help overcome the current challenge. As such, the authors believe that Korea's innovative approach and experience can inform other nations dealing with COVD-19, while also leading to greater international collaboration for better preparedness when such pandemics occur in the future. This case study also considers implications for both public policy and organization, and the authors pose critical questions and offer practical solutions for dealing with the current pandemic.

This paper is an empirical attempt to verify the interplay between political change, fleet nationality, and the evolution of shipping networks. North Korea offers a good example of a socialist maritime country that has experienced much contrasting geopolitical contexts since 1990. A database of vessel movements between North Korean ports and other ports is analyzed. Main results show differences between North Korean and foreign fleets in terms of traffic (vessel size, age, berthing time) and geographical coverage. South Korean ports tend to play a new role in the reorganization of North Korean-related flows in Northeast Asia.

In this chapter, we examine the multifaceted challenges that feminist labor organizations face in decommodifying the lives and labor of poor and working-class women. Using an in-depth case study of domestic worker organizing in South Korea, we find that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the National House Managers Cooperative and the Korean Women Workers Association became entangled in hegemonic state projects that linked support for women’s basic livelihoods to the proliferation of part-time, informal domestic work in the context of widespread crises. To challenge the discriminatory and market-driven logics of state-driven social protection efforts, these NGOs have advanced an emancipatory agenda to improve the working conditions, labor rights, and social dignity of domestic workers through consciousness-raising grassroots organizing methods and contentious policy advocacy campaigns. Their social movement transformation goals, however, have been constrained by the relative organizational isolation and limited organizational capacity of feminist labor NGOs in a broader context of neoliberal precaritization and gender-stratified labor markets. The myriad dilemmas facing domestic worker organizing in an era of global hegemonic market rule highlight the need to develop new political imaginaries to contest gender and economic injustice.