Critical Junctures of Technological Mediation: Infrastructuring a Tracing System Through Commercial Apps in South Korea

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the global development of contact tracing systems, revealing the adaptability of digital platforms for urban infrastructure. This study, as part of a broader investigation into the implementation of a South Korean contact tracing system during the pandemic, employs an archival research method to examine how the government strategically developed the infrastructure by using the most popular commercial apps in the country. The article identifies three critical junctures of technological mediation in this process—the sites of data reproduction, intimate interaction, and subjectivity transition—elucidating how these junctures interlinked and transformed the material capacities of the involved components, to expedite data reproduction and realignment, a process through which a new digital infrastructure could be configured. The examination of this infrastructuring process highlights the materiality of digital infrastructure as existing through and for data reproduction. This article proposes that this perspective can provide a useful lens to examine evolving forms of infrastructuralization and critique their political implications.