Government PR Budgets Skyrocketing

Since the inception of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, each government ministries’ budgets for public relations-related advices and consulting have significantly increased; this year’s budgets are nearly eight times those of the last year of the Kim Dae-jung administration.

Allocation of the budgets, which was confined to the Government Information Agency (GIA) alone under the Kim Dae-jung administration, has been expanded to other ministries under the current government.

According to the “Current Status of Budgets of Government Agencies for Public Relations-Related Advices and Consulting” reported to Rep. Lee Kei-Kyung of the Grand National Party (GNP) on June 25 by the National Assembly Budget Office (NABO), the budgets for the year 2006 were 1.2315 billion won, a 114 percent increase from the previous year.

Each government agency’s budgets for public relations-related advices and consulting are part of the entire budgets related to public relations. Data disclosed by Rep. Lee in March shows that the entire public relations budgets of 37 government ministries and agencies have risen every year, from 15.576 billion won in 2004 through 20.688 billion won in 2005 to 27.89 billion won in 2006.

According to the NABO report, budgets for public-relations advice and consulting used to be below 200 million won every year, reaching 197 million won in 2000, 183 million won in 2001 and 160 million won in 2002.

The budgets, however, increased to 276.5 million won in 2003, when the current administration took office. They continued to rise to 309.4 million won in 2004, to 575 million won in 2005 to a staggering 1.2315 billion won this year.

The budgets for public relations-related advices and consulting, which were used by the GIA alone until 2002, were shared by the Ministry of Labor (MOL), the Ministry of Unification (MOU) and the Ministry of Environment (MOE) starting 2003; the Ministry of Construction and Transportation (MOCT) and other six ministries were given those budgets in 2005 and this year, the number increased to 10 including the MOL and some government agencies.

In 2006, the MOL got the largest share of the budgets; out of 1.2315 billion won in the entire budgets, the MOL’s share was as much as 444 million won.

Min-Hyuk Park mhpark@donga.com