Actor Lee Minho (image courtesy of Yonhap)
The ad will be released on major TV channels and online sites in such countries as the United States, Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, starting early next month, it said.
“We’re going to launch an aggressive ad campaign that can induce residents of major foreign countries to visit to achieve an early recovery of the local tourism market mired in a slump due to the spread of MERS,” a ministry official said.
Actor Lee Minho
The infectious disease has claimed dozens of lives in South Korea but is now nearing eradication.
The number of incoming tourists nosedived 41 percent on-year in June, contracting for the first time in 25 months, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.
South Korea has reported no additional cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome for the past 19 days, with the death toll remaining flat at 36 for nearly two consecutive weeks.
Since the first case was reported in May, 186 people have been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease while 138 of them have been discharged from hospitals following complete recoveries.’
