By Lee Kyoung Mi and Lee Hana

The coronavirus pandemic turned 2020 into a year of unprecedented emergency. As COVID-19 swept the globe, it changed daily life and disrupted social systems, flooding news feeds with the latest related topics and issues.

Korea.net sought to share news on Korea with readers worldwide this year, producing a combined 7,226 articles in nine languages as of Dec. 27 and attracting 20,594,270 visitors and 92,516,090 page views over the period.

The Korea.net article with the most views was the Japanese-language version of the story "Foreign tourists laud gov't efforts to contain COVID-19" with 53,707. Posted in February before the coronavirus grew more widespread, this piece described Korea's response to COVID-19 at major tourist spots in the capital like Seoul Station, the shopping district Myeong-dong and Gyeongbokgung Palace.

A tourist interviewed in this article said, "Korea seems fully aware of the severity of the situation and is taking good measures against the coronavirus by making hand sanitizer available everywhere and thoroughly disinfecting areas," giving the impression of a safe country to be in despite COVID-19.

Surprisingly, the Japanese-language version of this story was the most read on Korea.net this year. This was likely due to the article being shared on a famous Japanese community website.

Second on this list was "Why Korea has more COVID-19 cases than elsewhere" posted on Feb. 28 in English with 30,576 views. Saying Korea saw a higher number of COVID-19 cases relative to other countries due to its superb capacity to test for the coronavirus, the article cited numerous foreign media sources to back this claim.

In third place was Episode 13 of the "While in Korea" series titled "Protecting yourself against the COVID-19 outbreak" with 18,201 views, followed by "White House: no under-30 deaths from COVID-19 in Korea 'reassuring'" with 17,785.

This year, seven of the top 10 articles were about the coronavirus as global interest in Korea's successful response to the outbreak helped spread these stories.

While articles on the pandemic got most of the attention in all nine language sections of the Korea.net site, "Mobile games led domestic video gaming sector in 2018" had the most views on the Russian-language page, "Global BTS art project opens Seoul exhibition" on the Arabic-language section and "Textbooks on Korean language, culture released for expats in Korea" on the French-language page.

The Spanish-language page had as its most read article "Korean content contest Talk Talk Korea 2020 launched" with 4,302 views, making it the most popular story excluding those in Japanese and English.

While in Korea, which gives foreign residents of Korea useful information needed in daily life, also rose up the ranks this year on the site's English-, Vietnamese- and Arabic-language sections.

Korea.net pledges to present the most accurate and comprehensive coverage of Korea in the new year.

km137426@korea.kr