Posts share unverified list of 'countries that supported South Korea's World Expo bid'

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 5, 2023 at 08:21
4 min read
By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea

After South Korea lost its bid to host the 2030 World Expo on November 29, social media posts have shared the names of 29 countries with a false claim it is a list released by the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) organisers showing the member states that voted for South Korea. However, the organisation told AFP the vote was carried out in secret and it has not released such a list. Three countries on the list -- Australia, Canada and Singapore -- are not BIE members and therefore were ineligible to vote in the poll, while several other countries on the list have either publicly or reportedly endorsed other candidates.

"World Expo disclosed the list of 29 countries that voted for us," reads the Korean-language claim shared here on Facebook on November 29.

The countries listed in the post are as follows: "Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Iceland, Austria, Ukraine, Israel, United Kingdom, France, Poland, Turkey, United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Gambia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea."

The claim was shared after South Korea's port city of Busan lost by a wide margin in its bid to host the 2030 World Expo in an election at the BIE General Assembly in Paris on November 29 (archived link).

The official results posted by the BIE showed that of the 165 votes cast, Busan received 29 votes while Rome and Riyadh received 17 and 119 votes respectively (archived link).

The Saudi capital was named the winner as it received the two-thirds majority of votes as required.

Screengrab of the false post.

The loss by a wide margin came as a shock to South Korean officials, who were quoted in multiple local media reports, including here and here, in days leading up to the vote as saying the race would be very competitive and that Busan had seemingly turned the tide at the last minute (archived links here and here).

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was in Paris less than a week earlier to make a final pitch for the country's bid, delivered a rare public apology to the nation hours after the failed bid, saying he would take the blame for the loss (archived links here and here).

The same list was shared alongside similar claims on Facebook here, here, here and here.

Dozens of comments left in the various posts indicated many users were misled to believe the list was genuine.

"In the end, it was a fight between the civilised and non-civilised," wrote one user.

"Wealthy countries voted for sanity, the poor voted for oil money," another wrote.

But a spokesperson for the BIE told AFP it has not revealed how member states voted in the 2030 World Expo host election as the vote was carried out in a secret ballot using electronic voting.

Secret ballot

A spokesperson for the BIE told AFP on November 29 that the only information it has disclosed was the total number of votes.

The spokesperson added: "In accordance with BIE rules, eligible and present Member States, represented by government-appointed delegates, elected the host country in a secret ballot using electronic voting, on the principle of one country, one vote."

The same information is available on the BIE's official website, which also says the host was elected "in a secret ballot using electronic voting" (archived link).

Three of the countries -- Australia, Canada and Singapore -- included in the list are not members of the BIE and were therefore ineligible to cast a vote in the 2030 World Expo election on November 29 (archived link).

The Expomuseum -- a website affiliated with the BIE dedicated to preserving the history of the exhibitions -- also lists the three countries as among 17 UN member states who are not members of the BIE (archived link).

Australia was a BIE member until it withdrew from the organisation after a parliamentary committee said in 2015 that it supported the country's withdrawal, citing the "high cost" of taking part in exhibitions (archived link).

Canada likewise withdrew from the organisation in October 2012 after its government cancelled its membership as part of a major spending cut, according to the Toronto Star (archived link).

Other endorsements

Some of the countries on the list in the false posts have openly endorsed South Korea's rivals in the race ahead of the vote.

French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his country's support for Riyadh's candidacy to host the World Expo, according to a statement from his office on July 29, 2022 (archived link).

The Argentine foreign ministry likewise posted its endorsement of Riyadh's bid in a post on X -- formerly Twitter -- on May 23, 2023 (archived link).

Uruguay also openly endorsed Saudi Arabia's bid after a meeting of the two countries' foreign ministers in May 2023, according to reports from Arab News and the Saudi Gazette (archived links here and here).

Israel too had initially supported the kingdom's bid but withdrew its support in favour of Rome on November 27 -- days before the vote -- after Riyadh joined other Arab countries in criticising Israel's combat operations in Gaza, according to reports from the Times of Israel and Middle East Monitor (archived links here and here).

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