Assembly member An Jeong-min conducts administrative audit of Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province spokesperson's office
An Jeong-min, a Gangwon Special Self-Governing Provincial Assembly member representing Wonju District 8 and a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, pressed the provincial spokesperson's office Wednesday during an administrative audit, asking whether it had ever measured changes in audience behavior before and after public relations campaigns and whether it tracked how effectively policy information reached its intended recipients.
The questioning targeted what An described as a longstanding practice of prioritizing news scrapbooks compiled for senior officials' briefings while neglecting to verify whether PR efforts actually worked.
Failing to assess effectiveness can undermine the goals of promotional and advertising campaigns, An said, and may create the false impression that simply getting coverage in local outlets constitutes a PR success — a pattern that also raises the risk of improper ties with specific media channels.
An also noted that after reviewing statistics on the provincial government's social media follower counts and its support for viewer-generated content, Gangwon ranked outside the top 10 on many indicators among the country's 16 metropolitan and provincial governments. An urged the office to identify the causes and develop concrete remedies.
An directed the spokesperson's office to first assess the PR needs of individual departments, review results together with those departments and incorporate the findings into future campaigns, and strengthen practical training for staff who manage official social media accounts and produce content.
According to data the spokesperson's office submitted to An, the province's official social media accounts had a combined subscriber and follower count of about 1.02 million as of the end of August. An noted that the figure aggregates eight domestic channels and six foreign-language channels, and that the same person can subscribe to multiple channels, making it difficult to conclude from that number alone that enough residents are actually receiving policy information.
"The spokesperson's office must go beyond simply compiling promotional materials from departments and fulfill its role as a coordinating body — surveying each department's PR needs and feeding back audience responses and improvement points after campaigns," An said. "Draw up a policy to strengthen the province's overall communications capacity, including practical training to raise the expertise of the staff responsible."
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