public health insurance. ...So anyone who had problems could... get tested and treated... This is how you manage to keep the death toll under 300, but in that country... because it controlled the health situation so well, it actually didn't go into full lockdown, but still, people were wary of going out and the biggest sufferers from this was... people... running small bars, restaurants, karaoke bars... [T]hese people were very hard hit and... I was... surprised [the country is] talking about universal employment insurance scheme. So... it doesn't matter what your job used to be... Countries are now talking about introducing unemployment insurance that covers people who work in any type of company, self-employed people, social platform workers, people working in the gig economy. ...[I]f it happens it will be a really progressive change..." - Meaning and context.">
Answer to the Question: The pandemic... exacerbated grave structural inequalities in various societies. Often... it takes a crisis to move reforms forward. What major interventions do you hope to see in both developed and developing countries?

The pandemic has revealed that... poor people—people in marginalized communities—are more prone to contract the disease and die from it because of generally worse health, limited access to health care, and other things that define this unequal society. ...[A] positive way to respond to this is to accept that and find a way to reduce that inequality, and it is already happening in some countries. ...I'm not usually a cheerleader for my own country, South Korea... we have so many shameful world records... the highest suicide rate, the lowest fertility rate... name it, but South Korea has... managed the pandemic really well, first of all because... despite this general aversion to the welfare state, it has a very robust public health insurance. ...So anyone who had problems could... get tested and treated... This is how you manage to keep the death toll under 300, but in that country... because it controlled the health situation so well, it actually didn't go into full lockdown, but still, people were wary of going out and the biggest sufferers from this was... people... running small bars, restaurants, karaoke bars... [T]hese people were very hard hit and... I was... surprised [the country is] talking about universal employment insurance scheme. So... it doesn't matter what your job used to be... Countries are now talking about introducing unemployment insurance that covers people who work in any type of company, self-employed people, social platform workers, people working in the gig economy. ...[I]f it happens it will be a really progressive change...

— Ha-Joon Chang

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The pandemic has revealed that... poor people—people in marginalized communities—are more prone to contract the disease and die from it because of generally worse health, limited access to health care, and other things that define this unequal society. ...[A] positive way to respond to this is to accept that and find a way to reduce that inequality, and it is already happening in some countries. ...I'm not usually a cheerleader for my own country, South Korea... we have so many shameful world records... the highest suicide rate, the lowest fertility rate... name it, but South Korea has... managed the pandemic really well, first of all because... despite this general aversion to the welfare state, it has a very robust public health insurance. ...So anyone who had problems could... get tested and treated... This is how you manage to keep the death toll under 300, but in that country... because it controlled the health situation so well, it actually didn't go into full lockdown, but still, people were wary of going out and the biggest sufferers from this was... people... running small bars, restaurants, karaoke bars... [T]hese people were very hard hit and... I was... surprised [the country is] talking about universal employment insurance scheme. So... it doesn't matter what your job used to be... Countries are now talking about introducing unemployment insurance that covers people who work in any type of company, self-employed people, social platform workers, people working in the gig economy. ...[I]f it happens it will be a really progressive change..." in the context of "Answer to the Question: The pandemic... exacerbated grave structural inequalities in various societies. Often... it takes a crisis to move reforms forward. What major interventions do you hope to see in both developed and developing countries?" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Quote Image
Source: Wikiquote: "Ha-Joon Chang" (Quotes, How to build a new society after the Covid 19 crisis (June 24, 2020): | SOAS University of London. A Creative Commons License video source posted (July 17, 2020) for the earlier virtual webinar.Also see: COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Ha-Joon Chang

About Ha-Joon Chang

Ha-Joon Chang (Hangul: 장하준; hanja: 張夏准; born 7 October 1963) is a South Korean institutional economist specialising in development economics. Currently a reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several widely discussed policy books, most notably Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002). In 2013 Prospect magazine ranked Chang as one of the top 20 World Thinkers.