More than a year after its unveiling, it’s time to evaluate the Moon administration’s online petition system.
After Moon Jae-in was sworn in May last year as South Korea’s new president, he focused on building an image as a leader who is open and willing to communicate with the public. After all, his predecessor, impeached President Park Geun-hye, was consistently criticized for never venturing out of the presidential Blue House and showing little interest in listening to public criticism.
Moon came out of the Blue House and talked to people. He drank coffee with staff members and went hiking to meet citizens. But his efforts to appear as an approachable leader were not limited to just publicity stunts.
The government created an official online channel on the website of the Blue House where citizens could file petitions. The idea was that if a petition got the backing of more than 200,000 petitioners within 30 days, a relevant and high-level government official would answer the petition while expressing the government’s view and explaining what might be done.
The reaction has been remarkable. There were a total of 160,000 petitions filed in the eight months from August 2017 to mid-May 2018, which marked the first anniversary of Moon’s inauguration. Another 160,000 petitions were filed between April and the end of October. This means an average of 744 petitions have been filed per day to date.
There have been a total of 53 petitions attracting more than 200,000 petitioners, and the government has responded to each of them as it promised.
Public interest in this new channel for communicating with the government has raised the profile of similar channels operated by a number of other governmental organizations.
Over the same period, for instance, the number of applications received by the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, which had been a representative source for public petitions before the presidential office opened its own channel, has also increased.
