BackThe Blue House, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat Office (Chief of Staff Min Kee), and the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC, Chairperson Jung Il Yeon) jointly held a pan-government innovation forum on March 31 at the Korea Press Center to address collective grievances and unusual public petitions. They declared their commitment to resolving chronic conflicts and comprehensively innovating the public petition handling system.
The forum brought together 300 participants, including heads and staff of public grievance departments from over 140 central and local governments and public institutions, to directly experience practical grievance resolution tools and successful case studies applicable in the field.
(Communicative Innovation) Candid Town Hall Meeting Between the Presidential Office and Front-line Public Officials Handling Public Grievances
The main event of the forum, the Town Hall Meeting for Unusual Petitions, was chaired by Joo Jin Woo, Public Conflict Mediation Secretary of the Presidential Office. Going beyond mere opinion gathering, the session allowed front-line civil servants to share success stories and lessons learned from handling unusual civil petitions, thereby exchanging practical know-how. It also provided an opportunity to candidly hear about the real-world challenges faced by public officials who handle civil petitions in the field, such as emotional labor and safety threats. At the same time, the session explored institutional mechanisms to listen to and handle unusual public petitions more rationally, as well as policy alternatives to protect the officials responsible for handling them.
(Operational Innovation) Sharing the Secrets of Success: From Resolving an Eight-Year Stalemate to a Paradigm Shift on Controversial Facilities
The forum also featured innovative cases of conflict mediation whose solutions were found on-site. Investigator Seo Sang Won of the ACRC shared a case in which he resolved an eight-year deadlock—marked by lawsuits and accusations between KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) and Dangjin City over the construction of a transmission line—through 24 on-site consultations, ultimately clearing the way for the Energy Highway Project, a core national energy network. Head of Mutual Cooperation, Park Ji Hye of K-water presented the case of the Hapcheon Floating Solar Power Development Facility, which had been an unwelcome facility but was transformed into a local landmark through resident-participatory profit sharing and design improvements. Head of Regional Cooperation, Yoon Sang Geun of the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) introduced the case of the Yeongdong Pumped Storage Power Plant, which addressed living conditions and local economic issues by thinking outside the box —specifically by repurposing unsold houses as relocation housing for residents displaced by flooding.
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Source: The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC), South Korea
