[The Chosun Ilbo, November 29 2007] Seoul City Requests W39 Bil. for Publicity Blitz

With an ambitious aim to attract 12 million foreign visitors in 2008, the city of Seoul wants to hike its public relations budget for next year eight-fold to a whopping W39.2 billion (US$1=W931).

The figure is almost four times higher than the Government Information Agency's PR budget of W10.9 billion. The city's PR budget for this year was W4.8 billion.

Seoul said on Wednesday it has decided to launch an aggressive marketing campaign in foreign media, from newspapers to Internet to broadcasters.

The draft budget includes W20.6 billion to air advertisements about the city on foreign cable networks such as CNN and with terrestrial broadcasters in China and Japan, W3.2 billion for Internet ads on foreign web portals including Yahoo and Google, W3 billion for magazine ads and W2 billion for billboards in major foreign cities.