This year's budget allotted to the Northeast Asian History Foundation, an arm of the Ministry of Education and Science that is responsible for publicity about the Dokdo Islets, is no more than W840 million, less than the price of an apartment in Seoul's prosperous Gangnam area (US$1=W1,092).

The foundation secured W50 million from special subsidies the ministry issued to city and provincial education boards, to print 20,000 copies of a supplementary textbook on Dokdo. Korea has over 6,000 primary schools, and each got only about three copies of the textbook.

The ministry earmarked W4.3 billion for Dokdo publicity last year, including W3 billion for the construction of the Dokdo Education and Publicity Center. But that budget was scrapped in the course of horse-trading in the National Assembly Education and Science Committee over free lunches for students.