Is this worth 14,900 won? The Yeosu Island Expo spent W70b in public funds — and keeps spawning scandals

A soy-sauce-marinated crab baekban meal served at the Yeosu World Island Expo [YouTube capture]

The Yeosu World Island Expo, backed by 70 billion won ($51.7 million) in public funding, is facing a growing wave of criticism over allegations ranging from civil servants taking leisure-heavy overseas trips to poor event management.

On Sept. 9, a food review YouTuber with 640,000 subscribers visited the expo and reviewed a soy-sauce-marinated crab baekban meal priced at 14,900 won.

The tray held soy-sauce crab, a bowl of rice, kimchi, corn salad, dried seaweed and soup. The reviewer gave the crab a positive assessment, saying it was "meaty," but after tasting the rice said it felt as though it had been sitting in an electric rice cooker for about a day.

Viewers who had expected a generous spread of banchan were quick to criticize. Online commenters said things like "even all-you-can-eat soy crab places do better than this," "did they measure out the side dishes with a teaspoon?" and "this looks more like a 6,000-won meal than a 14,900-won one." Some users posted side-by-side comparisons with other soy-sauce crab baekban meals sold for 15,000 to 20,000 won.

A "Geomundo Baetnnorae" performance at the Yeosu Island Expo drew criticism for its makeshift stage — a one-ton truck draped in cloth. [YouTube capture]

A performance of "Geomundo Baetnnorae," a traditional seafarers' work song that organizers had billed as a highlight, also drew ridicule. The staging amounted to little more than a one-ton truck wrapped in cloth and fitted with a makeshift sail, with performers standing in the cargo bed rowing oars to re-enact the folk song.

Video showing the truck's body and wheels in plain view as it moved through the venue prompted widespread mockery, with many saying the production quality fell far short of what the event's scale and budget should have delivered.

An aerial view of the Yeosu World Island Expo venue. [Yonhap]

Allegations have also emerged that civil servants used the expo as a pretext for leisure-heavy overseas trips. Reports circulating online claim that 107 overseas business trips were taken over the past several years under the expo's name, with the trip reports described as substantively hollow.

Some of those reports, which contained spelling errors, included observations such as "the ramyun was the best" and "the forest bathing was wonderful," drawing online comments calling them "elementary school level."

Itineraries that had nothing to do with the expo — including elephant trekking and fishing excursions — have also come under fire as tourism disguised as official travel.

The Yeosu city government acknowledged that some trip reports amounted to copy-and-paste work and lacked rigor, but maintained that the connection to the expo had been somewhat overstated.

A search of the government's overseas training information system using the expo as a keyword does return 107 trip reports.

The city said trips directly aimed at benchmarking island expos abroad numbered 21 over three years from 2023, focused mainly on the United States, Japan and China.

The remaining 86 trips, the city said, were routine travel by staff handling international affairs, high-performing employees recognized for their work, or policy research teams — and the expo was not their primary purpose. The city added that the report that spread online was one of those 86.

The city attributed the frequent appearance of expo-related content in reports filed under other purposes to an internal culture that encouraged all overseas travelers to highlight expo benchmarking and incorporate relevant examples regardless of their trip's actual objective.

The 2026 Yeosu World Island Expo, themed "Islands, Connecting the Sea and the Future," opened Sept. 5 and runs through Nov. 4 at the Jinmo district on Dolsan Island in Yeosu. The international event, designed to showcase the ecology, culture and future value of islands through exhibitions, hands-on programs and performances, aims to draw participants from 30 countries and attract 3 million visitors. Total project costs stand at 70.3 billion won.

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