Korea's civic movement has sustained one pillar of Korean democracy over the past three decades. Civil society organizations, which grew explosively after the 1987 system, served as "watchdogs" breaking down information asymmetry, "amplifiers" gathering the scattered voices of citizens, and "guardians of the public interest" checking power and capital. From the introduction of the real-name financial transaction system, chaebol reform, and the enactment of the Anti-Corruption Act and Information Disclosure Act, to the eradication of real estate speculation and the improvement of the leasehold system—behind every major institutional change in Korean society has been the devoted participation of civil society organizations and their members. The foundation that made these achievements possible was nothing other than the operating principles of the civic movement itself. Independence and public-interest orientation, sustained solely through citizens' membership fees and donations without relying on government funding—this has been the fundamental driving force that allowed civil society organizations to speak their voice without bowing before any power, and it is itself an asset of our democracy.
Yet Korean civil society now faces a question heavier than pride. "On what will civil society organizations survive going forward?" This question transcends the survival of any single organization and represents a question of the times that reexamines the identity and role of Korea's entire civic movement.
This question is not Korea's alone. Henry Kissinger, a giant of 20th-century diplomacy, in his final work "Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit" (co-authored with Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie, 2024), defined the emergence of artificial intelligence as a "fundamental reorganization of the human condition" comparable to the printing press and the Enlightenment. He warned that in an era when AI deeply intervenes in human thinking, judgment, and decision-making, the greatest danger lies not in the technology itself but in "humans surrendering their authority of judgment to machines." To prevent this, he emphasized that governments, corporations, and civil society must together create "institutional mechanisms to align AI with human values." What Kissinger focused on until the end was ultimately the question of "who will defend the public interest in the AI era," and this aligns precisely with the question Korean civil society faces today.
The environment of the 1980s and 90s when the civic movement began has already fundamentally changed. Anyone can speak out via social media, petitions to the National Assembly and the Presidential Office have become routine, and one-person media sometimes overwhelm major press outlets. The "power to set public-interest agendas" once monopolized by civil society organizations has already dispersed, and in some quarters, the painful criticism of "civil society organizations without citizens" has even been raised. The aging of membership, low youth participation, and shrinking donations are not problems of specific organizations but realities that Korean civil society as a whole faces together.
Still, one cannot say the role of civil society organizations has ended. On the contrary, quite the opposite. As channels of expression have multiplied, voices have scattered further, data has become more fragmented, and the paths leading to actual policy formation have narrowed even more. The agreement of hundreds of thousands gathered on petition boards disperses without being translated into policy, and the anger of social media vanishes buried under the next issue. Citizens' voices have grown explosively, yet paradoxically the rate at which they connect to policy has declined. Moreover, we are passing through another great transition called artificial intelligence. Policy is becoming increasingly complex and data-driven, while citizens' modes of participation remain at the level of petitions, message boards, and one-time tips. To borrow Kissinger's expression, at the very juncture where human judgment begins to be passed off to machines, citizens' voices are drifting away from the policy process.
How can this gap be bridged? This is the most urgent question posed to Korean civil society today. And a seed of that response is being sought within civil society itself. A representative example is the "AI-based citizen participation platform" that Citizens' Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) is newly designing. The vision is to create new public-discourse infrastructure that continuously collects and accumulates opinions and reports citizens raise in various domains such as housing and real estate, consumer protection, and integrity and fairness; uses artificial intelligence to automatically identify recurring problems and structural issues; and has members, researchers, and field experts verify these to develop them into policy agendas and legislative proposals. For example, even if hundreds of citizens appeal in different ways that they "could not get their jeonse deposit back," AI can bundle these into a single common problem type and organize them by damage type, region, and time period. Scattered cries become data, data transforms into policy agendas, and these circulate back into citizens' lives. Of course, for such a vision to take root as actual infrastructure, meticulous internal preparation by organizations and broad empathy and solidarity from civil society must accompany it.
The survival of civil society organizations is no longer guaranteed by organizational brand names or past achievements alone. When citizens experience their own problems leading to actual policy changes, participation and donations revive. This is precisely where the significance of the AI citizen participation platform lies. Technology itself does not save civil society organizations. Restoring the social trust of civil society organizations by redesigning the path through which citizen participation leads to policy outcomes—that is the essence of this attempt.
One thing must be made clear here. The core of this attempt is not "AI deciding everything." AI is merely a tool for systematically organizing citizens' voices, and the final judgment and policy design are decided together by citizens, members, and experts. This is not a model in which technology replaces the civic movement, but one in which the civic movement uses technology as a tool. As Kissinger repeatedly emphasized in "Genesis," the key to the AI era lies not in "what machines can do" but in "what rights and responsibilities humans will defend in making decisions." What we must guard against is not "not using AI" but "being dragged along by AI."
Such exploration can be read as an attempt to redefine the role of civil society organizations along three dimensions. First, a shift from "watchdog" to "policy producer." This is an active role that does not stop at criticizing power and capital but refines citizens' voices into sophisticated policy alternatives and connects them to legislation and institutional improvement. Second, a shift from "spokesperson" to "mediator." This is a role in which civil society organizations do not speak on behalf of citizens but rather design channels through which citizens can speak directly, mediating so that those voices reach policy. Third, a shift from "movement" to "infrastructure." This is the work of building public infrastructure where citizen participation is continuously accumulated and circulated back into policy, going beyond one-time campaigns and statements.
This transition is not the task of CCEJ alone. Numerous civil society organizations including People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, Korea Federation for Environmental Movement, YMCA, and Heungsadan face the same concerns in their respective domains. Some are experimenting with digital campaign platforms (examples include People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy's "Open the National Assembly" and the public-discourse tools of the Parti Cooperative), some are exploring watchdog activities combined with data journalism (representative examples are Newstapa's investigative reporting and the Center for Information Disclosure's data releases), and others are trying to overcome generational disconnection through programs cultivating young civic activists (such as the youth academies of Heungsadan, YMCA, and People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy). Only when these various attempts come together can Korean civil society find new coordinates befitting the AI era.
Of course, the road ahead is rough. How will we correct data bias? How will we transparently disclose algorithmic decision-making processes? How will we capture the voices of citizens excluded by the digital divide? If we cannot answer these questions, the AI citizen participation platform risks degenerating into yet another form of "technological solutionism." Therefore, from the outset, data ethics and privacy protection principles, securing algorithmic explainability, and parallel operation with offline participation channels must become core design principles. Above all, what matters most is steadfastly carrying on the principle civil society has upheld since its founding—independence based on voluntary citizen participation and donations, without relying on government funding. The moment this principle collapses
