Various certificates and confirmation documents like resident registration copies, which have been issued only in paper forms, will be issued electronically beginning late this year according to the civil petitioner’s choice.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety Monday, the Korean government has been cooperating since last July with a professional consulting company to develop a national digital certificate issuance and distribution platform to be used by all administrative agencies and public institutions. The government aims to build the platform by November this year and begin issuing resident registration documents first in electronic forms in December as a pilot program.

Paper certificates issued by administrative agencies and public organizations in Korea numbered about 870 million in 2,700 kinds in 2017, according to the interior ministry. Replacing only 10% of the paper documents with electronic ones will result in savings of 500 billion won a year in social costs like transportation fees and paper storage expenses, the ministry says.

The platform is expected to use blockchain technology to prevent electronic file tampering and solve the difficulties in verifying original copies. Citizens can install an electronic document wallet in their smartphones and store and use e-certificates issued from electronic civil service windows such as Government 24. It’s also possible to send copies to the electronic document wallets of other people. The electronic document wallet will be distributed via the Government 24 application basically but civil petitioners can choose to download the wallet in their favorite application like Kakao Pay.

The interior ministry will hold meetings attended by central government units, local autonomous bodies and public institutions to finalize the blueprint for the digital certificate project before embarking on the project as soon as preparations are made. Following the electronic issuance of resident registration documents in December, the ministry will begin an electronic issuance of other documents like family relationship certificates and the land register.

“We will do our utmost to make the digital certificate project a good example of administrative innovation,” said Vice Minister of the Interior and Safety Yoon Jong-in, adding that possible side effects will be scrutinized carefully so that citizens can use the service conveniently. /minsy@decenter.kr

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