Statistics Korea bolsters international cooperation in battle against COVID-19

By Lee Kyung-min

Statistics Korea said Thursday it would continue to help the international community fight COVID-19 by sharing its knowhow of prevention and response measures needed while collecting data.

Its emergency manual distributed to international organizations is receiving a wave of positive responses from global peers whose operations have all but ground to a halt due to temporary suspensions of in-person interviews brought on by lockdowns and social distancing.

They include the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD set up an online platform to share the measures from each country, April 6, a week after Statistics Agency Commissioner Kang Shin-wook made the recommendation on March 31.

“Countries are experiencing major disruptions leading to fears that their quality of work will suffer and the health of their workers will be at risk. We received many inquiries on various related subjects and replied to them the best we could, which helped us draft the manual. We are happy to help,” a statistics agency official said.

The manual details ways to protect the health and safety of statistics workers while conducting in-person interviews.

It has guidelines outlining work-from-home policies, changes in working hours and workforce allocation and a strengthened and diversified chain-of-command system, all designed to help the agency operate with minimal disruption.

“Most of the data needed for important economic and social surveys is gathered via in-person interviews, with examples being consumer prices, household incomes and expenditures. Such crucial work has been halted and we hope our manual can help other countries in a way they best see fit to weather the crisis,” she said.