Public Policy Processes and Citizen Participation in South Korea

This chapter discusses the policy-making processes in Korean society, describing the background and the workings of the strong administration system. It describes the establishment of a participatory government and provides an example of the processes followed by the Ministry of Environment. The chapter explores institutional efforts to integrate public participation in the policy-making process, including adopted participation systems. To overcome the defect of the unilateral policy-making process, the Korean government is experimenting with various participatory systems. Citizen participation can be of diverse forms and embodied at each stage of participation: Agenda setting, policy making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. Citizen referendum may be a very effective tool to resolve challenging policy issues that government is unable to solve. In a citizen litigation system, the citizens as tax payers monitor possible wrongdoing and squandering of the public expenditure. The Korean system is distinct in that it has both citizen jury and lay judge elements.