'Grand Beginning, Weak Ending'... Presidential Office Faces Consecutive Incomplete Public Contests

No 'Top 3 Selection' for Abuse Check
Criticism That It Was a Predictable Issue
Public Event Trust Plummets

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki-min Lee] The public trust in the Presidential Office's nationwide contests is declining. This follows the decision not to select the top three proposals in the public suggestion contest after the naming contest for the Presidential Office. Despite citing ‘organized interference’ by external forces, the lukewarm response is also expected to come under scrutiny.

According to the Presidential Office on the 2nd, after conducting a public vote on 10 public suggestions on the public suggestion website, numerous instances of abuse using overseas IPs were confirmed, leading to the decision not to select the final top three. A Presidential Office official stated, "We felt that our work was being systematically obstructed."

However, criticism has arisen that this was a predictable problem since voting was possible without login procedures such as social media (SNS) or mobile phone authentication. The Presidential Office official explained, "It was to increase participation," but this contradicts the confidence expressed earlier by Senior Secretary for Civil Society Kang Seung-gyu during a briefing on June 23, who said, "It is operated with 100% real-name verification through macro prevention to avoid distorting public opinion."

The Presidential Office pledged to discuss the issues revealed this time with IT experts and improve the system, but it seems difficult to easily restore trust in the public events that have already lost credibility.

First, this is the second time that a final conclusion has not been reached in a public vote. The naming contest for the Yongsan Presidential Office and the public suggestion selection event were conducted by first receiving public submissions for the candidate pool, followed by a committee of experts reviewing and selecting the final work.

Although the Presidential Office said it would establish standards to prevent recurrence, given that it mentioned ‘organized interference,’ the lukewarm handling of this issue is also being criticized as unreasonable. Since a similar case of manipulating ‘likes,’ the Druking incident, was punished as obstruction of portal site operations, this is considered a serious matter.

Professor Shin Yul of the Department of Political Science at Myongji University said, "The public suggestion abuse case appears to be an incident that a rational organization should refer for investigation," adding, "If such loopholes accumulate, trust in the Presidential Office will significantly decline."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.