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Korea`s quake relief donations to Japan hit $52 mln

Posted April. 19, 2011 10:42,   

한국어

Korean’s donations to the victims of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami have surpassed than 57 billion won (52 million U.S. dollars), said Korean charities involved in the campaign Monday.

Following the March 11 quake, a combined 57.2 billion won (52.55 million dollars) was collected across the country from March 14 to April 14, they said. The Korean Red Cross and the Community Chest of Korea collected 52.4 billion won (48.14 million dollars) in a month, the largest for an overseas disaster.

The Korean Red Cross collected 39.2 billion won (36 million dollars) through its automatic response system and homepage as well as Naver.com`s donation site Happy Bean. The figure represented the largest amount among Korean charities that raised funds for Japan and four times its collection of 9 billion won (8.27 million dollars) to help victims of the Haiti quake in January last year.

Funds raised by the Community Chest of Korea reached 13.2 billion won (12.12 million dollars), 2.6 times the 5 billion won (4.59 million dollars) it collected for Haiti. International relief agencies World Vision collected 2.4 billion won (2.2 million dollars), UNICEF 1.6 billion won (1.5 million dollars) and Good Neighbors 800 million won (735,000 dollars) over the one-month period.

Donations sharply fell this month, however, after Japan renewed its sovereignty claim over Dokdo in new middle school textbooks on March 30. The Korean Red Cross’s relief campaign will continue until May 13, yet the number of donations decreased to 100 per day in the middle of this month from 1,200 in March.

The number for the Community Chest of Korea also fell from 2,000 to 200 over the same period.

Besides the Japanese textbook dispute, a natural decline in public attention over time was also the reason. Major charities are considering reducing donations for Japan relief.

World Vision has deleted the Japan relief donations banner on its homepage. “We decided to stop marketing efforts since far more than our initial target of 400 million won (367,000 dollars) has been raised already,” said a source at the charity.

Good Neighbors said, “Though we didn’t put a deadline on donations, the average number of donations fell 3 percent last week from the first week.”



jhk85@donga.com