Presidential Office Likely to Recommend Legal Amendments to Strengthen Regulations on Assembly Noise and Ban Road Occupation

Support for Strengthening Sanctions More Than Twice Opposes
Announcement After Discussion by National Proposal Review Committee and Internal Reporting

The Presidential Office is reportedly set to recommend revising the enforcement decree of the 'Assembly and Demonstration Act (Jipsibeop)' to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety soon, based on the results of the public participation debate. Since there were more opinions in favor of strengthening the requirements for assemblies and demonstrations, it is expected that the system will be improved to strengthen noise regulations, expand the prohibition of road occupation, or restrict nighttime assemblies.

A Presidential Office official explained to Asia Economy on the 4th, when asked about the recommendation to revise the enforcement decree regarding the strengthening of assembly and demonstration requirements and sanctions following the public participation debate, "After analyzing the (debate) comments and organizing the results, the final recommendation will be discussed at the Presidential Office's Public Proposal Review Committee."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The Presidential Office conducted a public participation debate on the topic of 'Strengthening Assembly and Demonstration Requirements and Sanctions' for three weeks from the 13th of last month until the day before yesterday. As a result, there were 129,000 opinions in favor of strengthening the requirements and sanctions, while opposing opinions amounted to only 53,000.

Although opposing opinions were once expressed in an organized manner, it is known that the final number of favorable opinions greatly exceeded twice that of the opposing opinions.

Following the previous topic of improving the TV license fee collection method, the Presidential Office reflected public opinion favoring separate collection of TV license fees and electricity charges and instructed the Korea Communications Commission and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to revise the laws for separate collection. Therefore, it is expected that this time as well, a recommendation to revise the enforcement decree of the Jipsibeop will be made.

In particular, there is a high possibility that a recommendation will be made to revise the enforcement decree (Article 14 and Appendix 2) in the direction of lowering the maximum noise standard and changing the measurement method, as suggested during the free debate.

The current regulation allows restrictions only when the maximum noise standard is exceeded more than three times in one hour, but it has been pointed out that this is insufficient to actually prevent noise damage.

Additionally, a recommendation to revise the enforcement decree (Article 12 and Appendix 1) in the direction of strengthening regulations related to the prohibition of road occupation may also be considered.

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