Korea needs to redesign its advisory committee system

Hong Sung-joo

The author is a senior research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute.

“Following consultation with experts.”

The phrase frequently appears when the government announces a new policy. It is often treated as a guarantee of scientific and rational decision-making. Yet the public rarely knows who provided the advice or what recommendations were actually made. At times, consultation also serves as a mechanism for dispersing responsibility within the bureaucracy. This is the uncomfortable reality hidden behind policy advice. The stage on which such advice operates is the government committee.

Complaints that Korea has too many committees have become almost cliché. As of 2025, there were 581 committees established under laws and regulations within administrative agencies. Of these, 41 were administrative committees and 540 were advisory committees, most attached to individual ministries. At first glance, the argument that there are too many committees appears obvious.

Yet this diagnosis misses the point.

If reducing the number of committees were the solution, the problem would have been solved long ago. Every administration has promised committee reform, but the number of statutory committees has remained at around 600 for the past two decades. Committees are not bureaucratic excess. They are suppliers of the policy knowledge required by modern government.

Climate change, AI, energy transition and supply-chain restructuring cannot be addressed through the intuition of ministers or civil servants alone. The reality is that governments increasingly depend on specialized expertise, making the proliferation of advisory bodies almost inevitable.

The real problem is that outside the 581 statutory committees lies a much larger universe of temporary advisory groups.

Whenever the government drafts a master plan, develops a long-term strategy, designs a major project or evaluates institutional performance, new committees are formed. Planning panels, task forces, working groups, evaluation teams, review committees and countless other bodies are assembled to draw on outside expertise.

These temporary organizations are estimated to number in the thousands, yet they fall outside the scope of the Act on the Establishment and Management of Councils, Commissions and Committees under Administrative Agencies. The government does not even possess a complete picture of how many exist. While public debate remains fixated on the number of official committees, a much larger volume of policymaking takes place in less visible spaces.

The resulting lack of transparency is not merely an administrative problem.

More seriously, expertise can be transformed from a public resource into a source of private influence. A committee responsible for allocating research and development funding or shaping industrial regulation may include individuals who stand to benefit directly from its decisions while participating under the label of independent experts.

Nor is the government required to explain which recommendations it accepted and which it rejected. Experts provide advice, bureaucrats borrow their intellectual authority and responsibility becomes blurred. No one is clearly accountable.

The questions we ask therefore need to change. Who selects the experts? What questions are they asked to answer? Are stakeholders presenting themselves as neutral specialists? Does the government explain why it accepts or rejects recommendations? Where does final responsibility rest?

Without addressing these questions, reducing the number of committees amounts to little more than cosmetic reform.

The goal should not be suppression but redesign. Korea needs a new framework for managing government advisory activities as a whole. Administrative flexibility should be preserved, but standards of transparency and accountability must be established.

Useful precedents exist.

Since 1972, the United States’ Federal Advisory Committee Act has required disclosure, record-keeping and balanced representation for advisory bodies created or used by federal agencies, regardless of their formal names. Although critics have pointed to enforcement limitations, the principle remains significant: Advisory activities are treated as matters of public governance.

Germany provides another model. When its Council of Economic Experts submits a report, the federal government must present an official response to parliament within eight weeks, explaining which recommendations it accepts and which it rejects.

The point is not to import foreign institutions wholesale. It is to learn from the principle that expertise must operate within a framework of public responsibility.

Three reforms are needed.

First, Korea should establish a government advisory activity registry. Whenever outside experts or stakeholders participate in national strategies, master plans, major fiscal projects or regulatory reforms, basic information should be disclosed. This should include the organization’s name, operating period, participants and affiliations, meeting records, major agenda items, recommendations, final outputs and budget.

Second, participant roles should be clearly distinguished. Experts, stakeholders and citizen representatives are currently grouped together as civilian members, even though their functions differ fundamentally. Experts should assess facts, risks and alternatives. Stakeholders should explain how policies affect their sectors. Citizen representatives should evaluate broader public interests. All are necessary, but they are not interchangeable.

Third, the government should be required to respond publicly to advisory recommendations. Officials should explain which proposals were accepted, which were rejected and why. Advisory reports should not simply disappear after submission.

The longstanding practice of justifying policy by invoking “expert consultation” must end. Legitimacy today depends on disclosure: who provided the advice, what interests were involved and how the government acted upon the recommendations.

The next stage of committee reform should move beyond numerical reductions and focus instead on building a transparent national advisory system worthy of public trust.