With AI, ePeople to drive government innovation citizens can feel
Jung Il-yeon, chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission
The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) operates ePeople, an online petition platform that enables citizens to file complaints to 1,407 organizations — such as central government agencies, local governments and public institutions — and allows those state-run entities to provide responses.
As of 2025, 11.69 million petitions have been filed through the system. By simple calculation, this means that at least 1 in 5 Koreans have filed a complaint through the system, meaning the handling of public complaints can be considered the administrative service most frequently used by the general public in Korea.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already becoming a part of our daily lives as we enter the era of AI transformation. According to the Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute (AIEI), Korea was the country with the fastest adoption rate of generative AI last year. A survey by the Bank of Korea, released in August 2025, found that 51.8 percent of office workers use generative AI in their work, a rate approximately twice that of the United States.
Against this backdrop, the ACRC launched an AI-based initiative to deliver quality administrative services that meet public expectations. In the first half of 2025, the commission began a project to integrate generative AI into the ePeople system. Since Feb. 5, it has been operating a pilot service that uses AI for responding to civil petitions and analyzing petition data.
The project consists of three major tasks. First, the AI groups similar or identical petitions so that public officials can review and respond to them all at once. This feature is currently being piloted at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Incheon Metropolitan City and Siheung in Gyeonggi Province, where a large number of similar complaints are submitted. For instance, a public official from one of these agencies recalled that when they logged in to the ePeople system, there were over 6,000 pending complaints waiting to be processed. A significant portion of the complaints, however, were similar in nature — such as requests from residents of specific areas to have a newly planned railway station built near their homes.
According to the public officials handling petitions, AI grouping similar complaints together has dramatically reduced the time required for review. Instead of spending long hours in front of the computer screen to handle responses, they can now conduct on-site visit to verify issues or consult with petitioners. In other words, AI reduces tedious tasks and ensures sufficient time for reviewing and addressing actual problems.
Second, AI searches for relevant laws and regulations and generates draft responses for inquiries related to the institutions’ remit. This feature is currently being piloted at the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, which receives many complex and specialized petitions. Public officials handling petitions can supplement or rewrite the AI-generated draft, and the revised answers are stored as training data.
Compared to relying solely on individual officials’ capabilities, AI provides far faster and more accurate responses by leveraging databases. At the same time, the content of these responses is refined through continuous learning. In other words, the quality of public service can be continuously improved.
Third, AI analyzes data on civil petitions to identify major social issues. The AI independently analyzes complaints submitted through ePeople and identifies emerging issues by time period or region. It can also identify the issues a large number of citizens are raising with the government at any given time.
The ACRC will promptly share the identified issues with relevant agencies to develop timely countermeasures. This can prevent or minimize public inconvenience. Furthermore, it can improve policy or set priorities for improvement, thereby realizing the people-sovereignty in administration.
Based on the results of the pilot project, the ACRC plans to gradually introduce various AI technologies — including interactive communication services between citizens and the government — to all 1,407 organizations that use ePeople from this year through 2030. The commission will continue to do its utmost to ensure that citizens can experience government innovation powered by AI in their daily lives.
Jung Il-yeon is the chairperson of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.