ACRC published Active Administration Casebook

The ACRC published Active Administrative Casebook containing 60 cases of citizen grievances resolved

August 12, 2019

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission

The Republic of Korea

Among the 150,000 civil complaints addressed through correction recommendation, mediation, or settlement for the past five years, the sixty cases that were resolved as a result of relevant administrative agencies’ proactive efforts in addressing them were released.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC, Chairperson Pak Un Jong) published Active Administration Casebook on August . The casebook contains active administration cases in which the ACRC and relevant agencies made proactive efforts to find solutions to complaints lodged by citizens suffering unfairness and inconveniences due to public officials’ passive administration.

※ Passive administration: Public officials’ inaction or passiveness in performing their duties, resulting in infringement on people’s rights and interests or losses to public finance.

※ Active administration: Public officials’ active endeavors in their work to enhance public interest based on their expertise or creativeness, for example, improving unreasonable laws and regulations.

Since its inauguration, the Moon Jae-in Administration, in its effort to realize ‘an inclusive nation where everyone prospers together’ and achieve government innovation, has strongly emphasized and actively promoted active administration, which includes improvement of laws and regulations based on public officials’ creativity and expertise.

As a case resolved by active administration, Biando residents could not use regular maritime transport for 17 years due to relevant agencies’ passiveness and conflicts between Gunsansi and residents of Buangun, Gunsansi. Biyando residents of 440 people, 188 households, had to travel inland on personal small fishing boats, which ended in a tragedy in 2007 when three residents were died after a fishing boat was capsized.

After fruitless efforts to resolve the grievance by visiting relevant government agencies many times and staging single-person protests during cold winter, Biyando residents turned to the ACRC for help and had their cases resolved.

In September last year, at the onsite mediation meeting organized by the ACRC, the village chief said with teary eyes, “I never imagined this day would come. All I can say is thank you.”

In another case, a man living in Paju, a city located in the area north of the Civilian Control Line, had a level 2 physical impairment after a landmine accident. He bought an agriculture pesticide spraying drone to farm for around 20 million won. But a military unit did not allow him to use the drone, claiming that drones are banned except in contingency operations, medical evacuations, or natural disasters.

So, he brought his case to the ACRC, saying “As a person with level two physical disabilities, I encounter many difficulties in getting by. With the drone, however, I could farm without any difficulty.”

After looking over the relevant regulation, the ACRC found out that because of their material and nature, agricultural drones have no risk of causing a military conflict and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is considering an amendment to a relevant law to give a limited approval to agricultural drone use.

At the recommendation by the ACRC, the Joint Chiefs of Staff improved the related laws and regulations.

As part of its efforts to stop public officials from causing passively serving citizens causing inconveniences and to build an actively working officialdom, the ACRC compiled cases of active administration to produce the Active Administration Casebook.

The casebook consists of cases showing ACRC’s pondering over how to resolve grievances of citizens suffering inconveniences when it is difficult to do so because there is no relevant regulation.

The ACRC will distribute the booklet to central administrative agencies, local governments, and public organizations in order to provide guidance to public officials in performing duties on the field. The casebook will be continuously updated based on actual cases.

In order to prevent passive administration which leads to citizen inconveniences, the ACRC has received passive administration reports in the e-People website from March this year. The Commission will continue to proactively respond to passive administration complaints caused by public officials’ inaction and unresponsiveness. When such complaints are raised, the ACRC will go beyond issuing a corrective measure and request supervisory agencies or the Board of Audit to conduct audit. By doing so, the ACRC will contribute to spreading actively working culture to the entire public sector.

Active Administration Casebook can be downloaded from the ACRC website (www.acrc.go.kr).