The Korean Culture and Information Service, affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, announced that its 11th group of “Friends of Korea” began activities from Friday.

Friends of Korea is a group of people whose main task is to report erroneous information about Korea in foreign media to the Korea Culture and Information Service’s online platform, “Fact:Korea.” Over the next four months, the group will also promote Korean culture to foreigners through both online and offline channels.

“As an increasing number of overseas media are reporting about how Korea is dealing with COVID-19, the role of ‘Friends of Korea’ to immediately find errors and provide the right information will become more important,” Director of Korean Culture and Information Service Kim Tae-hoon said in a statement. “We will continue to correct the errors in cooperation with related ministries and private organizations.”

For its 11th group, the Korea Culture and Information Service selected 35 people, including 27 Koreans and 8 foreign participants from countries such as the US, Italy and Australia living in Korea.

Having begun in 2013, 322 people in total have participated in the Friends of Korea program and more than 8,200 errors have been spotted through the program, with about 800 of them being corrected.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)