A close look at changes in life satisfaction and perceived social cohesion from 2016 onward reveals the following trends. First, life satisfaction fell and self-reported depression levels rose markedly among men in their 40s and 50s and women in their 20s and 30s, and such groups with significant income loss as the self-employed, and those who self-identified as lower-middle class. Second, the public’s sense of national pride, social trust, and perceived social cohesion have increased to a large extent from their pre-pandemic levels. Third, interpersonal trust and social capital at the individual level in contrast has declined from their pre-pandemic levels. The sense of national pride in having, with a systematic quarantine management and the mature civic awareness of Koreans, responded aptly to the covid-19 crisis is thought to have translated into the rise in perceived social cohesion, while it is presumably as a consequence of the disproportionate effects of the pandemic that life satisfaction fell and the level of self-reported depression rose. There is a need to commit wide-ranging policy interventions on the one hand to preventing the effect of covid-19 pandemic from becoming long-term and on the other to promoting social cohesion in response to the growing uncertainties of the present times.
