Seoul City increases PR budget by 74%

By Bahk Eun-ji

Seoul City's budget for public relations this year increased 74 percent from a year earlier, according to city officials Tuesday.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon /Korea Times file

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and the Seoul Metropolitan Council, the budget for the civic communication planning division, which is in charge of public relations, is 103.5 billion won ($87.9 million) for this year, up 74 percent from 59.4 billion won in 2019.

Considering the budget growth rate for civic relations from 2016 to 2018 was around 10 percent each year, the sudden dramatic increase this year is unusual.

The city government said it has significantly increased the budget to compensate for policy deficiencies stemming from a lack of publicity.

If the budget is analyzed based on the unit price, the number of advertisements in Seoul is expected to increase significantly this year. The number of advertisements screened on terrestrial television will almost triple, from 28 last year to 80; cable and general service programming channels will also increase to 194 from 62; and radio commercials will jump to 150 from 50. The number of newspaper advertisements will more than double from 140 to 300 and magazines will publish 250 advertisements, up from 150.

The advertising budget for electronic signboards, intercity buses subway and street vendors, which are not media outlets, has more than doubled from 1.6 billion won last year to 3.5 billion won this year. In particular, the budget details, which only covered “major initiative policies” such as Zero Pay and paid sick leave until last year, were broken down into the city's core projects and citizen-based projects.

“A project such as housing support for newlywed couples is one policy that citizens should be aware of. There should be no cases in which citizens cannot use the services created by taxpayers' money due to the lack of promotion,” said an official of the city government.