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| The online public petition platform introduced by outgoing Moon Jae-in government will shut down, Monday, nearly five years since its launch in August 2017. Screenshot from Cheong Wa Dae's website |
By Lee Hyo-jin
The popular online public petition platform launched by the outgoing Moon Jae-in government will shut down, Monday, with the end of Moon's presidency.
The public petition platform on Cheong Wa Dae's website was introduced in Aug. 19, 2017, 100 days after Moon took office, with the aim of gathering public opinions better through direct communication with citizens and reflecting them in government policies.
Anyone could upload a petition anonymously to the platform, and those who supported the petition could sign it using a social media account. The government was required to give an official response to any petition that collected more than 200,000 signatures within 30 days.
According to the presidential website, until Feb. 28 of this year, a total of 1.11 million petitions had been submitted. The aggregate count of visitors to the website stood at 516 million, and the number of total signatures collected reached 230 million.
A total of 286 petitions have garnered over 200,000 signatures each. Of them, 127 posts were about crimes such as DUI cases, sex crimes and offenses against children, along with calls to strengthen the punishment of offenders. Another 71 were about government policies, while 46 were about political issues.
Kim Byeong-rok, a professor of law at Chosun University, viewed that the public petition platform has played a positive role in making up for the cons of representative democracy and strengthening the practice of direct democracy in Korea.
In his study and journal article titled, "Study on improvement direction of the Blue House petition," Kim stated, "The petition platform has realized direct democracy thanks to its accessibility, and the rule that the presidential office is obligated to give a response if a petition draws certain number of signatures."
In particular, public petitions have played a crucial role in drawing public attention to criminal cases such as "Telegram Nth room," the high-profile criminal case in which women were coerced into obscene acts and their images and videos were sold illegally via online group chats on Telegram.
Nine petitions regarding the case were submitted, which gathered over 7.69 million signatures altogether, prompting the authorities swiftly to come up with preventive measures and toughen punishments for digital sex crime offenders.
But some critics said the page has inadvertently become a platform for sociopolitical disputes and the expression of hatred against religious or ethnic minorities, as seen by some posts such as a petition against the arrival of some 550 Yemeni asylum seekers in 2018, which drew over 700,000 signatures.
