The four-river refurbishment project, implemented by the Lee, Myung-Bak administration, commenced in 2009 and was completed in 2011. During the past three years, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, Dept. of Public Relations has spent...
The four-river refurbishment project, implemented by the Lee, Myung-Bak administration, commenced in 2009 and was completed in 2011. During the past three years, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, Dept. of Public Relations has spent over \20,000,000,000- on policy advertisement. However, according to the analysis of advertisement effect conducted by Korea Press Foundation on Oct. 2011, the majority of public were either unaware of or had a negative view of the four-river advertisement program. The effect was not in proportion to the budget used by governmental advertisement department. The purpose of this study is to diagnose the strategical problems of this government`s persuasive communication regarding the Four-river Refurbishment Project and to search for a more effective policy advertisement strategy. The previous analysis and evaluation studies of the government`s persuasive communication strategy were mainly just two-frame based in relation to the triple crossroads namely, ``Government-Public``, ``Government-Media, and Media-Public. However, this study attempts a comprehensive study of the triple crossroads that offers an integrated frame of Government-Media-Public in order to conduct a advertisement strategy analysis of the Four-river Refurbishment Project. For this purpose, the persuasive communication of the government`s Four-river Refurbishment Project were first categorized, the public survey results conducted by the Korea Press Foundation reanalyzed and its results used as basis for analysing the problems related to an effective persuasive communication. Furthermore, the perception of the advertisement related personnel of the competent department for the Four-river Refurbishment Project were researched and analyzed using an in-depth interview. Also, a survey was conducted on how media reporters, accredited to the competent department, viewed the advertisement strategy in order to study its problems. The results of the study reveal that the advertisement strategy for the Four-river Refurbishment Project failed to properly design an accurate advertisement program that includes a sur vey of public opinion and the creation of a forum for public debate on the subject. It also failed to properly establish a long-term, accumulative, dynamic communication strategy. Instead, it choose to follow the customary advertisement method and v er ification study of the advertisement effect was not performed. Results supporting these findings were drawn from surveys of accredited r eporters and in-depth interviews of advertisement related personnels. As a result, extensive modifications to the strategy advertisement methods for future major governmental national policy projects are inevitable. In future, a more systemic advertisement program need to be established and, to do this, diverse public opinion need to be gathered on one hand while a more professional and effective advertisement strategy that takes into account factors such as decision-making, mass-media utilization, and usefulness is needed on the other hand.