hankyoreh

Infrastructure

By Noh Hyun-woong, staff reporter and Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent

With public opposition to the privatization of the railroads and the medical system spilling over into the trend for “how are you nowadays?” hand-written posters, the Blue House gave orders for various government ministries to run rebuttals of these arguments in a bid to stop the movement in its tracks, the Hankyoreh confirmed on Dec. 19. Since this represents an organized attempt to undermine public opposition to privatization, it is likely to spark controversy.

On Dec. 19, the Hankyoreh obtained an email that had originally been sent by an official surnamed Park working in the public relations office for the Blue House. According to the email, the Blue House issued orders to various government ministries to counter public opposition to privatization.

“In a situation where distorted information about railroad privatization and the medical system is spreading online, virtually no online response has been made by the ministries concerned (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport and the Ministry of Health and Welfare) and other associated agencies,” Park’s email said. “There is a critical need for the ministries to work together on publicity.”

“There appears to be a need to create relevant media content including infographics and comic strips within the day and take measures so that this content can be disseminated online with the cooperation of the various ministries,” Park wrote.

“There is an urgent need for measures to be taken so that the mood online does not spread offline,” Park said.

The email was first forwarded to the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism around 8 am on Dec. 18 and after that it spread among the various ministries, sources said.

The government agency that responded most eagerly to this email was the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, which is in charge of privatization of the railroads.

On Dec. 18 the ministry posted a 1 min. 44 sec. video on YouTube, which it then shared on its Twitter and Facebook accounts. Titled “How are you nowadays?” the video begins with the caption “Korean Railway Workers’ Union” and continues with interviews with six people. The video is critical of the union‘s strike.

Sprinkled throughout the video are captions saying “We are not okay because of the illegal strike” and “It’s wrong to hold the entire Korean people hostage.” Captions at the end of the video read “The Suseo KTX line is not a private line but rather a subsidiary of Korail” and “Being suspended from one’s position means that one’s employment status is pending; it does not mean that one will be fired immediately.” The video also took issue with the content of the poster written by Korea University student Ju Hyun-u that triggered the “How are you nowadays?” phenomenon.

After sharing this video on Twitter and Facebook on Dec. 18, the ministry posted about 150 tweets on Dec. 19 in criticism of the labor union‘s strike. Prior to Dec. 19, the ministry’s official Twitter account had posted an average of 5-10 tweets a day.

On Dec. 18, the Ministry of Health and Welfare added a post to Twitter and linked to official government material. “The government opposes privatization of medical care just as you do. We are working on ways to secure the integrity of medical companies, methods to save regional medical organizations with patient-centered long-distance medical care. We will listen carefully to the issues you are concerned about and draft detailed plans to address those concerns,” the ministry said in the tweet.

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance also took part in the publicity efforts on Dec. 18 by retweeting Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport posts about railroad privatization. These retweets were done after the email was sent by the Blue House.

“The Blue House never ordered a response to the ”how are you nowadays?“ hand-written posters,” said a Blue House official. “[The email was giving] directions for responding to incorrect information about railroad privatization and medical privatization. There is nothing unusual about a government taking action to correct false information related to government policies.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]