[단독]When the confirmation surged, 800 million was spent in Southeast Asia to promote K quarantine.

It was confirmed that the Overseas Culture Promotion Agency under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism spent 800 million won to promote K quarantine abroad.

According to data obtained from the Overseas Culture Promotion Agency on the 22nd by Rep. Jong-heon Baek, the public relations agency was promoting K-defense using TV broadcasts and outdoor advertisements in Southeast Asian and European countries from October to December. This budget was formulated during the third supplementary administration.

According to the document “National Image Enhancement Overseas Advertisement Promotion Plan (K Defense)” produced by the Public Relations Agency, this budget is “promoting the improvement of national image through overseas advertisements,” and “promoting a message of hope for overcoming Corona 19 and responding examples from Korea. It was executed for’indirect publicity’. The content of the advertisement was made as’K Defense Promotion (30 seconds and 15 seconds)’.

The main targets were 10 new southern countries, where 500 million won was executed. Ten countries are Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Vietnam, Thailand (ideal TV advertisement), Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia (ideal outdoor media). The budget spent for each country varied from 13 million won to 84 million won. The remaining 300 million won is being used to broadcast advertisement videos in other regions through the BBC and Arirang TV.

In the advertisement, cotton masks were sent to Korea for humanitarian purposes over the past decades, and now, along with the content that Korea is sharing disposable masks with countries that helped the Korean War, Korea is a Korean-style model that controlled Corona 19 (K It consists of a message saying that you want to share. There is also a Korean walking-through method of corona 19 diagnosis.

In response, Rep. Paik criticized it as “showing that the government was focusing only on promoting K quarantine during the period when the government had to devote all efforts to obtaining a vaccine.”

In addition, it seems difficult to escape criticism that it was easy to promote K-quarantine abroad in the current situation where nearly 1,000 confirmed cases occur a day and the government is having difficulty in supplying and receiving vaccines.

An official at a university hospital said, “Currently, there are situations where an emergency occurs in the whole country due to a lack of hospital rooms and medical staff, and there is a situation where there is an unfortunate accident every day, where people die because they cannot find a hospital room. “No.”

It is pointed out that the selection of countries where advertisements to promote K-quarantine were executed are not appropriate.

Singapore has secured a quantity of vaccines that can be vaccinated by the whole country, and Prime Minister Li Xianlong said in a speech to the public on the 14th that “the (Pfizer) vaccine will arrive at the end of this month.” In addition, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia are countries where the number of confirmed cases per day is a single digit. On the 21st, when 869 confirmed cases were found in Korea, two were reported in Vietnam (a population of 97.33 million, a cumulative confirmed case of 1413), and Cambodia (a population of 16.7 million, a total of 363) and 0 confirmed cases.

Rep. Paik pointed out, “It is only a waste of budget to show K quarantine by using blood tax in countries with better anti-coronavirus posture than Korea.” Regarding this point, the public relations agency clarified that’there was no special purpose (the ones set for Southeast Asian countries). In the political world, some say that Southeast Asian countries were chosen to show results in response to the New Southern Policy emphasized by the Blue House.

Reporter Yoo Seong-woon [email protected]