Mayor Kim Sang-wook launches random citizen jury

Ulsan City has introduced random lottery selection of ordinary citizens to block the distortion of opinions and the rubber-stamp controversy surrounding local government committees. Existing committees have a structural limit in that they tend to be composed mainly of people close to the mayor. An Ulsan City official explained that by selecting citizens at random, as with jury selection, the city has secured the committee's independence.

Mayor Kim Sang-wook explained that to block these problems, the city will recruit a citizen jury through random lottery of ordinary citizens, similar to how courts select jurors.

Citizen jury meetings begin with lively debate among experts arguing for and against the issue.

The roughly 100-member citizen jury is then split into several teams that circulate their findings. Each team reviews the results of the others, encouraging citizens to exercise collective wisdom through mutual review.

In pushing ahead with bus route reorganization, Ulsan City introduced a procedure that gathers citizen opinion first, to avoid one-sided administration.

For about two months, the city first collects and organizes citizens' opinions before commissioning a service study. When the study results come out, they are again made public and citizens are asked for their views, in a stepwise process.

If the citizen jury operates repeatedly rather than as a one-off, the city expects citizens' collective wisdom to be refined, with more developed opinions emerging in the second and third meetings as earlier input is reflected.

Throughout this process, experts' objective explanations and evaluations run alongside, and the city sees the collection of citizen opinion as a practical constraint on the authority of the mayor and the city council.