ROK Military’s Roles and Disaster Relief Activities in the Time of COVID-19 - The Transformation into Comprehensive Security to Achieve Positive Peace through Cooperative Networks -

The COVID-19 epidemic has accelerated the transformation of the Republic of Korea (ROK) military’s role from traditional to comprehensive security activities to achieve a positive peace in the post-Cold War era. In this study, we explore roles and activities of the military in response to national disaster and relief situations. We analyzed 796 news articles published in 2020 with the keywords “COVID-19” and “ROK military” First, text mining analysis revealed the keywords “COVID-19” and “the President.” Second, network analysis identified a strong connection between: “the president”-“public,” “confirmed person”-“infection,” and “support”-“Daegu.” Third, using CONCOR analysis, we identified four clusters, categorized as: “the President’s official statement,” “activities to prevent the spread among local communities,” “COVID-19 infection in the military,” and “COVID-19 quarantine activities.” These results demonstrate that disaster relief activities were mostly comprised of “medical resources,” which were conducted through the cooperative networks of the Armed Forces Medical Support and the National Defense Rapid Support teams.