(Photo: Yonhap)
The novel coronavirus has devastated South Korea's culture, sports and tourism sectors, causing a combined loss of 88 trillion won, or roughly 74 billion dollars, since the pandemic broke out early last year.
Consumer spending in the tourism and leisure sector decreased by an estimated 39.3 trillion won from January 2020-June 2021, according to a government report submitted to parliament on Friday.
Over the 18 months, the content creation industry saw a drop of 2.9 trillion won, including 2.4 trillion won in damage from the film industry.
In the culture and arts sector, the loss was estimated at 1.2 trillion won over the cited period.
But the sports business took the biggest hit, posting a 44.8 trillion-won drop in consumer spending due to COVID-19 and related restrictions to stop the spread of the virus.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said it is drawing up a rescue plan worth 2.6 trillion won to help the damaged sectors stay afloat.
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