Revisiting the botched bid for World Expo 2030

Yeh Young-june

The author is the chief editor of the JoongAng Sunday.

The lead-up to the failed bid for the 2030 World Expo looks quite similar to the process leading to the crushing defeat of the People Power Party (PPP) in a recent by-election in Seoul. Upon confirming the overwhelming loss of the governing party, President Yoon Suk Yeol reportedly lambasted party leaders for inaccurately reporting to him about the situation. Pointing to the declining support for the PPP candidate, not a few in the party warned of an apparent defeat of the candidate in the election for the Gangseo District head.

The government’s campaign to host the Expo was no different. Only after the overwhelming victory of Riyadh over Busan was announced, Yoon found that the prospect of the second-largest city in Korea winning the bid had been overblown. His confession — “Our government’s prediction seems to have missed the mark pretty much” — precisely reflects his last-minute embarrassment.

But there is a clear difference between the two episodes. In the case of the failed Expo bid, not only the president but also a majority of the people were misled by wrong information. Many Koreans suffered “torture by hope” from the propaganda machine of the government, which expected a razor-thin match against the Saudi capital. What went wrong from the start?

Foreign Minister Park Jin delivers an opening speech at the 5th International Conference on Action with Women and Peace, held at Grand Hyatt Seoul on Dec. 30. When asked about the government’s failed bid for the 2030 World Expo after the event, he said the government had done its best to host the event in Busan. [YONHAP]

The conservative government meticulously checked the fluctuations of support among 182 member countries of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) — the intergovernmental organization overseeing and regulating World Expos — 24/7 until the final voting in Paris on Nov. 28. Around September, I heard that while Riyadh secured 70 votes, Busan did only half the votes. Even the poor score reflected wishful thinking, given the final score of 119-29 in the first round of voting. And yet, rumors continued spreading that the president narrowed the gap by holding more than 30 bilateral summits on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The rumor was soon followed by the upbeat news that it turned into a neck-and-neck race.

Government officials even boasted of the possibility of Korea beating Saudi Arabia by assuring a second round of voting. They based the assessment on 15 countries who “promised to vote for Busan” in the second round, though they would support Riyadh in the first. But the match ended with the first round with no need for the second. The government’s final assessment of the race was 90 votes for Riyadh and 50 votes for Busan. But Riyadh actually received 30 more votes — and Busan 20 fewer votes — than the final estimates.

The government should have taken a more careful approach. Above all, someone should have told the truth to the president without bending the numbers. Such jobs can be better performed by the National Intelligence Service (NIS), which has tight and expansive information networks overseas. But the top spy agency was embroiled in an internal conflict at home, which led to the replacement of all top-caliber agents. If the NIS had not presented its own analysis to the president, it is a dereliction of duty — and if its analysis was no different from the government’s, it is incompetent. If the spy agency had delivered wrong information to the president after assessing the prospect correctly, that’s the worst of all because it’s the same as negating its own raison d’être. Whatever the case, the spy agency cannot avoid criticism.

The failed Expo bid must not be dealt with lightly. If the government makes such misjudgments on national security issues, the country must pay a heavy price. It is not the time to appreciate all the efforts the government made but the time to find out what really went wrong until the last minute. The president’s confession about the failed bid could be frank and sincere. Yet, it cannot give immunity to all the fumbles the government made until the failure.