DistantNews
Support us
🇰🇷 South Korea /Culture & Society

South Korea to Centralize Response to Repetitive Public Complaints

From Dong-A Ilbo · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources New plan
  • South Korean presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik ordered a systemic change in handling repetitive public complaints.
  • The directive aims to shift the burden from individual civil servants to government agencies to prevent administrative waste.
  • This response comes amid concerns that malicious, repetitive complaints are overburdening public officials and delaying essential services.

South Korean Presidential Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik has ordered a significant overhaul in how the government handles repetitive and excessive public complaints. The directive, issued on May 25, 2026, targets the issue of "unreasonable complaint bombs" by instructing the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission to transition to a system where institutions, rather than individual civil servants, are responsible for responding to frivolous, repeated grievances.

The move is a direct response to growing concerns that administrative resources are being squandered on managing malicious and repetitive complaints. This has led to a situation where public officials are disproportionately burdened, diverting their attention from essential duties and potentially delaying critical services for the wider public.

Transition to a system where institutions, not individual civil servants, respond to frivolous, repetitive complaints.

· Kang Hoon-sikPresidential Chief of Staff, directing government bodies to change how they handle excessive public complaints.

During a senior secretaries' meeting at the Blue House, Kang cited statistics indicating the scale of the problem. He noted that from 2021 to 2025, a staggering 41.52 million public complaints were filed across 243 local governments nationwide through the National Citizen Complaint system. Kang highlighted an extreme case where one individual lodged 46,669 complaints in a single year, illustrating the severity of the issue.

Kang emphasized that such excessive and repetitive complaints place an undue burden on frontline civil servants. He expressed concern that the over-allocation of administrative power to address these specific complaints could lead to delays in providing essential services, such as support for vulnerable populations, impacting the majority of citizens.

Excessive administrative power is being allocated to address these specific complaints, leading to delays in providing essential services for the majority of citizens, including support for vulnerable populations.

· Kang Hoon-sikExplaining the negative impact of repetitive complaints on public administration.
About this summary

Originally published by Dong-A Ilbo in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog