Kwonikwi: "Administrative and Deliberation Committees Should Expand Youth Generation Participation"

Policy Implementation Reflecting the Will of the People

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission announced that it has prepared institutional improvement measures to expand youth participation in administrative and deliberative committees and recommended them to 13 relevant ministries including the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, 17 metropolitan local governments, and 65 public service-related organizations.

Kim Tae-gyu, Vice Chairman of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

On the morning of the 25th, Kim Taegyu, Vice Chairman of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, said at a briefing at the Government Seoul Office, “We have established the principle of youth participation in various committees and prioritized having at least one-tenth of appointed members be youth. We also set an upper limit so that the proportion of metropolitan area committee members does not exceed 50% when there is no or low appointment of local talents.”

Currently, central administrative agencies, metropolitan local governments, and public service-related organizations operate 4,900 administrative and deliberative committees, which are collegial bodies composed of multiple members to provide advice, consultation, and deliberation/decision-making on their respective affairs. A total of 87,000 members are active, with committee members consisting of 27% public officials and 73% private members. However, issues of fairness and unreasonable cases continue to occur in the operation and composition of committees.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission recommended improvements such as publicly recruiting private members starting from committees with about 100 or more members. It also limited the continuous reappointment or overlapping appointments of specific individuals, which restricts the participation of diverse experts, by capping the appointment of the same member to the same committee at a maximum of six years and requiring prior checks to prevent appointments to more than three committees. Furthermore, committees of metropolitan and public service-related organizations that have not held meetings in the past three years are to establish reorganization plans for consolidation or abolition. Additionally, due to insufficient control measures over private members performing licensing and dispute mediation tasks, it was legislated that penalties applied to private members active in 22 committees under 11 relevant ministries be treated as if they were public officials.

Vice Chairman Kim said, “With these institutional improvements, committee operations will become more substantive, enabling policy promotion that reflects the public’s opinion. We will continue to improve unreasonable systems so that various committees accurately reflect the public’s views and support policy decisions that are helpful.”

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