[K Women Talk] Painful Lessons from the Expo Hosting Campaign

The long campaign to host the 2030 World Expo, which everyone had eagerly hoped for, ended in a deeply disappointing result. Not only did we fail to advance to the second round of voting as expected, but the margin of support?119 to 29?was nothing short of shocking. It is now time to move past the shock, coolly review the campaign process, and comprehensively identify where things went wrong. We must use this as a valuable lesson for future international efforts to secure hosting rights, as our future depends on it.

Of course, it is well known that the 2030 Expo bid was an uphill battle from the start, and the power of oil money cannot be underestimated. Therefore, failing to win the bid itself cannot be defined as a failure. Throughout the campaign, sharing South Korea’s future vision with the world and enhancing Busan’s brand power as a global city, as well as initiating meaningful exchanges with many countries with whom relations had been distant for decades, are significant long-term gains. The problem lies in why such a severe gap emerged and why we failed to recognize this gap in advance. We must not simply attribute this to the overwhelming influence of competing countries’ oil money.

As someone who participated in the campaign as a citizen representative promoting Busan to support negotiations, I want to reflect on and point out a few disappointing aspects of this campaign along with some self-reproach.

First is the negotiation control tower’s expertise in diplomacy. Diplomatic negotiations must be conducted under a command system based on extensive experience and sound judgment. Within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is common knowledge that when analyzing support votes, about 20% of the countries expressing support should be excluded due to double commitments. If the Ministry’s experience-based analysis fails to gain traction and is buried under collective hopeful thinking, objective judgment becomes difficult. When passion and enthusiasm alone prevail, a sense of reality disappears, and cold analysis is dismissed as defeatism, leading to serious misjudgments.

Second is the importance of narrative, that is, the message. One of our narratives in this campaign was that South Korea is the only country that has transitioned from being an aid recipient to an aid donor and a successful nation committed to helping the international community. Another was that as a country that overcame communism and dictatorship, we would lead global liberal democracy. The first message was inaccurate because countries like China and India have long been aid donors rather than recipients. Claiming to be a successful country sounds arrogant if self-proclaimed rather than praised by others. There was even an unbelievable incident where a special envoy pressured a poor country to learn from our success during negotiations. While we should take pride in liberal democracy, considering that only a minority of the 180 countries are liberal democracies, it was not a universally appropriate message to emphasize. After all, this was a campaign to host the Expo, not a campaign for liberal democracy.

Lastly, the negotiation method. It is effective to select individuals skilled in building consensus and communication tailored to each counterpart country and to deliver customized messages. Efforts to identify and utilize people with connections to the counterpart country, relationships with high-ranking officials, and those who can earn trust were lacking. If it would aid negotiations, it was necessary to make broad use of not only the private sector but also foreign consultants.

Of course, it cannot be said that the absence of these issues would have guaranteed our success in hosting. However, at the very least, the campaign could have elevated our national prestige further and delivered a greater emotional impact, reducing the nationwide disappointment caused by excessive expectations. This must serve as a painful but valuable lesson for the future.

Park Eun-ha, Former Ambassador to the United Kingdom