South Korea

1 national P.B.

38 PB projects by central government

35,722 PB projects by local governments (19,149 by higher level, 16,573 by lower level)

Unknown. The total number of institutions which run PB programs has not been researched yet. Anyhow some institutions run PB program. For example, K-water (Public water management company) has started PB this year.

​7 metropolitan cities (Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Incheon, Gwangju, Daejeon, Ulsan) promote 3,281 PB projects and 4 cities (Suwon-si, Goyang-si and Yongin-si under Gyeonggi-do and Changwon-si under Gyeongsangnam-do) promote 362 PB projects.

Local governments are obliged to run PB program by National law on local finance. Article 39 (Residents’ Participation in Budget Compilation Process of Local Governments):

1. The heads of local governments shall prepare and implement procedures (referred to as “PB process” hereafter in this Article) for residents to participate in the budget compilation process, as prescribed by Presidential Decree. <Amended by ​Act No. 13283, May 13, 2015>

2. The heads of local governments shall collect the opinions of residents participating in the budget compilation process pursuant to paragraph (1) and a budget bill sent to local councils shall be accompanied by such opinions. <Amended by Act No. 12687, May 28, 2014>

3. The Minister of the Interior and Safety may evaluate the administration of the participatory budgeting process by local government, as prescribed by Presidential Decree. <Newly Inserted by Act No. 13283, May 13, 2015; Act No. 14839, Jul. 26, 2017>

[This Article Wholly Amended by Act No. 10991, Aug. 4, 2011]

​Clarifying legal basis to operate National PB program. Enforcement Decree of the National Finance Act. Article 7-2 (Citizen Participation in the Budget Process)

1. The Government shall implement measures necessary for enhancing transparency and citizens’ participation in the budget process as prescribed in subparagraph 4 of Article 16 of the Act.

2. The Government shall examine opinions of citizens presented during their participation in the budget process and may incorporate the outcome thereof into budgeting.

3. To facilitate gathering of opinions under paragraph (2), the Government may operate a delegation of participants consisting of citizens.

4. Details necessary for formulating measures pursuant to paragraph (1) shall be prescribed by the Minister of Strategy and Finance.

[This Article Newly Inserted by Presidential Decree No. 28509, Dec. 29, 2017]

Participatory budgeting is mandated by law in Korea. Thus total 244 (243 local authorities and Central government) PB programs are running. We are developing various new models on PB management considering population size, demographic composition, geographic∙industrial and other features. We are running expertise consulting group to complement citizen’s idea by experts. The group is a private and public joint form and assures higher level of cooperation in the deliberating process for project prioritization. In addition, we are expanding the usage of various digital platforms in our management process in order to invigorate participation and communication with citizens. More specifically, we are operating an official homepage and some social media accounts and utilize them in the overall program management processes such as program advertisements, project reception, prioritization, executive process monitoring etc.

Our PB program is pursuing qualitative improvement based on quantitative growth such as increasing the number of participants in the program. First of all, transparency in government financial management has been increased with the help of PB program. Operating the PB, we are trying to release more information on budget compilation and execution to the public. This allows citizens to better understand the procedure and function of public budget and draws their active participation. Secondly, Korean National PB system is developing a way to expand the participation of socially marginalized groups and thus to enhance democracy in financial sector. We added 50 members from socially disadvantaged class into Citizens committees (total 400 members) to listen to their requests more directly. We also added ‘Visiting reception’ form of receiving proposals. Most of ​the submissions are made online and we focused on vulnerable groups, who find it difficult to access the internet or who are too busy in daily affairs to submit the proposals. To solve the problem, we visited institutions related to vulnerable groups and took their proposals as tape-recording method. In 2019, 49% of the proposals were taken through visiting reception. In local PB level, the effort to bring students into participation is widening.
Conventionally, students who don’t have voting rights are not considered as policy making group but as passive policy target group. Now by establishing Youth Commission and hosting student policy contest or many other events, we are drawing students to be the agents in policy making process. On top of these, PB program also has a positive effect on raising efficiency of financial management. Of course, in project suggestions and budget reflection process, citizens can also take part in the monitoring, evaluation, feedback process and examine any inefficiencies in national finance.

We could observe that there were noticeable quantitative improvements in Korean PB. For example, the number of proposed items increased 16% and the budget request from the ministries increased 42.4% this year in national PB. In Seoul PB case, proposed items increased more than 8 times and PB amounts increased almost 6 times over the past 6 years. More than 120 thousand citizens are participating in prioritization with electronic votes. For the continuing progress of PB system, central and local governments are cooperating via events such as nationwide PB workshop. It was agreed to enhance sharing outstanding experiences and joint promotion to raise awareness of PB system. We are searching for cooperative measures to improve Korean PB on longer term aspect.