• Date: October 29th, Thursday, 2020 14:00 – 17:10
• Online via Zoom & YouTube live streaming

[Book Concert] Prolonged COVID-19 Pandemic, Asia’s Endurance-Strengthening Program: Empathy, Healing, and Social Solidarity

※ Zoom URL: https://snu-ac-kr.zoom.us/j/3949573655 [Open from 13:45 on the day of the event] ※ YouTube Streaming link will be announced on SNUAC website on the day of the event.
※ Please register prior to the event by email (ama99@snu.ac.kr) if you would like to participate.

• Organization: SNUAC HK+ Mega-Asia Research Project Team
• Host: Ministry of Education, National Research Foundation, SNUAC HK+ Mega-Asia Research Project Team
• Inquiries: Jongseok Yoon, SNUAC HK Research Professor (ama99@snu.ac.kr, 02-880-6894)

□ Background

As of October 2020, Europe and the U.S. are amidst worries for a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Korea and Asia are also in a very indeterminate situation where COVID-19 could resurge at any time. SNUAC HK+ Mega-Asia Research Project Team seeks to create an opportunity for us to discuss the endurance of society that lets us persevere through the COVID crisis and to create a place of social healing and expand social solidarity through empathy.

This event will reflect on how we are enduring through the enormous shock, anxiety, and fear of COVID-19 as the crisis is elongated. Beyond physical disease prevention centering on physical distancing, the middle and long-term response including social and psychological disease prevention is more important, and the success depends on the social endurance to live through complex crises as well as the elasticity to quickly respond to crises. Most of all, we are in desperate need of socio-philosophical thinking on inclusivity of and coexistence with social groups that oppose or resist disease prevention, political justification, financial reward system, and means of social stress reduction that can hold various interest groups in the order of disease control.

We need to seek an increase in society’s endurance by expanding social solidarity through social healing based on empathy. The endurance of society refers to the ability to stand economic concession and social stress for a long time and includes key virtues such as the spirit of community and reciprocal encouragement and consideration among members of society. We will discuss two books related to COVID-19 and examine the present and historical experience through the insight of humanities and empathy of social sciences, in order to create an experience of social healing that expands the collective recognition of danger and empathy for recovering our daily lives.  In the process, we hope that we can all verify how our lives can always continue in solidarity with others and contribute to the expanding of social solidarity to overcome the great fear and anxiety and look back on each other as well as the increasing of the overall society’s endurance.

□ Details

▲ Composed of Section 1 (Humanities) and Section 2 (Social Sciences) (90 min. each)

※ After each section, online participants will share their experiences and opinions after the presentations and discussion.