Exploring Trust in the Police in South Korea During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Does Fear of the COVID-19 Matter?

• Published date: 01 June 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/07340168231194618
• Author: Yongjae Nam,Jon Maskály,Sanja Kutnjak Ivković,Peter Neyroud
• Date: 01 June 2024

Exploring Trust in the Police in

South Korea During the

COVID-19 Pandemic: Does

Fear of the COVID-19 Matter?

Yongjae Nam

1

, Jon Maskály

2

,

Sanja Kutnjak Ivković

3

, and Peter Neyroud

4

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments restricted community members’activities

and, in turn, patterns of human behavior, both legal and illegal, changed. In many countries, the

police have been entrusted to enforce these new COVID-19 related restrictions and were often

perceived as the main enforcers of these sometimes unpopular measures. In this paper, we study

four types of factors that may affect the public’s trust in the police during the COVID-19 pandemic:

traditional factors, such as interactions with the police during the pandemic, assessments of the

police effectiveness in dealing with the pandemic, COVID-19 related factors, such as instrumental

concerns for their personal health, and the adherence to the conspiracy theories. Specifically, using

data from a sample of 527 respondents from the Seoul metropolitan area in South Korea, collected

in the fall of 2021, we estimate the effects of the factors listed above. The results indicate that trust

in the Korean National Police was strengthened when the police were perceived to have effectively

dealt with the challenges of the pandemic and addressed the instrumental concerns of the commu-

nity in the protection of public health. No demographic variables were significantly independently

associated with trust in the police during the pandemic. The theoretical and policy implications

of the findings are discussed.

Keywords

trust in the police, pandemic, instrumental concerns, police-community relations

1

Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, USA

3

School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

4

Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Corresponding Author:

YongjaeNam, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, The University of Texasat San Antonio, 501W. Cesar E. Chavez

Boulevard, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.

Email: yongjae.nam@utsa.edu

Article

Criminal Justice Review

2024, Vol. 49(2) 135-155

© 2023 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/07340168231194618

journals.sagepub.com/home/cjr

Introduction

When the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020), the

World Health Organization urged governments worldwide to impose measures to restrict the

spread of COVID-19. In many countries, the police have been entrusted to enforce these new

COVID-19-related restrictions, often with no or quite limited training (e.g., Matarazzo et al.,

2020; Warren et al., 2020). On more than one occasion, the police were accused of being heavy-

handed in administering these measures. In the report about the police enforcement of COVID-19

restrictions in South Africa, one of the countries with the most stringent COVID-19 regulations,

Faull (2020, p. 1) vividly argued that “State abuses [during the enforcement of COVID-19 restric-

tions] could match the threat of COVID-19 itself.”The strict enforcement of lockdown rules and

the potential abuses by the governmental agents in the process could have contributed to the

spread of conspiracy theories, leading to lower trust in the government (e.g., Murphy et al., 2022;

Pummerer et al., 2022).

Trust or confidence in governmental institutions leads the public to perceive the government as

legitimate, resulting in greater support for and compliance with governmental measures. While

trust or confidence in the government is important during “normal”times, it becomes much more

important during physical disasters and humanitarian crises (e.g., Murphy et al., 2022; Volkan,

2014). Specifically, during these times, the safety and security of society might critically depend

on the degree to which community members obey the governmental orders (e.g., Blair et al.,

2017) and when conspiracy theories about the government’s misuse of power are more likely to

blossom (e.g., Murphy et al., 2022). In the context of COVID-19, compliance with governmental

instructions on safe practices can lead to the curtailing of the disease’s spread (e.g., Sedgwick

et al., 2022). Research indicates that in such situations, people pull together around their govern-

ment—the “rally around the flag”effect (Mueller, 1970)—leading to an increase in institutional

trust (Bol et al., 2020; Esaiasson et al., 2020; Sibley et al., 2020). Empirical research on trust and

compliance with governmental measures during the COVID-19 pandemic confirms that trust is pos-

itively and directly related to compliance with COVID-19 orders (e.g., Devine et al., 2021; Han et al.,

2021).

However, there is limited extant research exploring how the public trust in the police during the

COVID-19 pandemic was shaped. This study focuses on the factors influencing community

members’trust in the police during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analyses further the research

by including instrumental concerns for their health prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We

test the effects of more traditional factors (e.g., experience with the police, police effectiveness)

and COVID-19-specific factors (e.g., fear of COVID-19, conspiracy theories) influence citizens’

trust in the police. Using data from a sample of 527 respondents from South Korea collected in

the Fall of 2021, we estimate the strength of these factors on the respondents’trust in the police

during the pandemic.

Literature Review

Trust in the Police

Trust in the police involves confidence that the police are competent, reliable, perform their duty, and

take actions with responsibility (Hardin, 2002). That is, public trust in the police refers to the public

belief that the police will exercise their authority by effectively producing the services they aresup-

posed to produce with the greatest interests in the community. In other words, what police officers do

(i.e., effectiveness) and how police do it (i.e., procedural justice) matter for the public’s trust in the

police.

136 Criminal Justice Review 49(2)