People stroll at a beach in the western coastal city of Taean in South Chungcheong Province on June 6, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 19 (Korea Bizwire) — The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries announced additional plans on Thursday to disperse visitors coming to beaches by introducing reservation systems, as part of efforts to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
The government will introduce reservation systems at 14 beaches located in North Jeolla Province’s Yeosu, Mokpo, and Shinan each with an annual number of visitors under 300,000 people, to test the effectiveness of such programs.
Reservations will be available at Sean Tour, an online public reservation platform, and local government websites. Anyone can book a reservation by providing the number of people, contact information, and the date of reservation.
The beaches will be open from July 10 to August 30. Each beach will accommodate visitors for 23 to 50 days.
The government also plans to introduce a ‘traffic light’ system to indicate how populated each beach is, to allow people to check before choosing to visit.
The ‘traffic lights’ will turn green if the beach is still within accommodation capacity. The lights will turn yellow if the number of visitors exceeds the maximum capacity by 200 percent, and red if it goes beyond 200 percent.
Usage information will be updated every 30 minutes for the traffic light system.
Accommodation capacity will be calculated to ensure social distancing of 2 meters between each visitor, dividing the available space inside the beach into 3.2 square-meters per visitor.
The government plans to use big data technology provided by KT Corp., the country’s major telecommunication firm, to operate the traffic light system, which will be first introduced at 10 large beaches, including Busan’s Haeundae Beach, on July 1.
The system will be expanded to cover 50 beaches across the country by mid-July.
H. M. Kang (hmkang@koreabizwire.com)
