Exclusive "One Person Can Participate Twice"...Credibility Questions Over Gyeonggi Province Petition System Tally

It has been confirmed that one person can agree with the same petition twice in Gyeonggi Province's online petition system.

According to Gyeonggi Province and others on the 21st, the Gyeonggi Province Petition is an online petition system operated to collect opinions from residents and reflect them in provincial policies. If a posted petition receives agreement from 10,000 or more people within 30 days, the Gyeonggi Province governor responds directly.

Petition participation does not require separate membership registration, and anyone can agree by going through an authentication process using a Kakao or Naver account.

However, the current system distinguishes and processes authentication information from Kakao and Naver separately, failing to prevent the same individual from using both authentication methods to agree with the same petition multiple times.

In fact, the province was aware that one person could participate twice. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the number of agreements displayed on Gyeonggi Province Petition so far has been tallied higher than the actual number of participants.

For example, if 5,000 people each agree twice using both Kakao and Naver accounts, the actual number of participants is 5,000, but the system could tally 10,000 agreements. This means the standard for determining whether the governor responds could be applied differently than the actual number of participants.

It has been found that the province already recognized this problem last year. However, at that time, petitions themselves were not numerous, and cases where 10,000 or more agreements—the requirement for the governor's response—were secured were rare, so no separate improvement measures were implemented.

However, recently on Gyeonggi Province Petition, petitions demanding the resignation of Gyeonggi Governor Choo Mi-ae and her renunciation of party affiliation, and petitions related to postpartum care support issues, have consecutively received agreements from over 10,000 people.

Accordingly, the province plans to first add a mobile phone authentication process in early next month to prevent duplicate participation by the same individual.

A provincial official stated, "By early November, we are developing a function that adds a mobile phone authentication process to prevent duplicate applications," and "We are currently conducting development work and plan to apply it in early November."

The function will be applied in-house through development staff operating the existing system, and it has been confirmed that a separate budget was allocated for the per-case costs incurred in the mobile phone authentication process.

Furthermore, in December, the province plans to introduce a government integrated authentication module established by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Gyeonggi Province currently has applied for a relay-type authentication module.

The government integrated authentication module is a system that supports unified use of various private authentication methods such as Kakao and Naver in public services. If information that can identify the same individual regardless of authentication method is linked with the petition system's duplicate prevention function, repeat participation can be prevented.

A provincial official explained, "In the past, petitions were not very numerous, and cases where petitions were established with 10,000 or more agreements were almost nonexistent, so it was practically not an issue. As petitions have recently become an issue, cases where conditions are actually being met are emerging, so we have taken steps to improve the system."