Seoul’s government prepares to launch its hugely anticipated “blockchain petition system” on March 1. The system will provide residents of the capital city to offer recommendations to the government about possible changes to enduring policies, or to surface new concerns.

Blockchain technology will mainly be utilized to verify the identity of every person on the network, to restrict duplicate votes.

Seoul’s latest initiative, named Democracy Seoul, is in line with the central government’s vision of building a more open and platform for discussions within the government and the general public. 

Since October 2018, the city has been welcoming all things blockchain—including a distributed-ledger system for used-car salespeople—as a component of a $109 million blockchain masterplan. Seoul is utilizing a proprietary blockchain.

South Korea’s legacy petition system

For years, South Korea has provided its citizens to present any petition on the official website of the Blue House, the office of the country’s President. When a petition encompasses 200,000 votes nationwide, the government is expected to discuss it publicly.

The blockchain platform developed by the government of Seoul would operate similarly to the Blue House’s petition system, but is exclusive to residents in the city.

If a proposal made on the blockchain platform encompasses 1,000 votes from residents, Seoul’s Mayor Park Won-soon will reply to it.

Eliminating double voting

Democracy Seoul discusses one of the major critiques of the national petition system, which has been bothered by double voting and fake identities. The system forces the government to acknowledge if any petition gets at least 200,000 votes within 30 days.

Nevertheless, as Kookmin University journalism professor Son Young-joon has pointed out, even someone with little knowledge of technology can fraudulently vote—as much as four times— by merely using several usernames and Internet service providers.

A blockchain-based system that verifies voters is expected to fix that. “A citizen-led process of creating practical policies goes in line with the vision of Seoul city that every resident is the Mayor,” said Democracy Seoul chairperson Oh Gwan-young said. “Seoul will continue to increase the cooperation of residents in shaping local policies through the platform.”