A Critical Assessment of the Two Previous Public Deliberation Workshops in South Korea

Mini-publics, which constitute a microcosmic public deliberation process, are increasingly being used in addressing broad policy decisions. Following the trend of applying mini-publics in diverse policy decisions, the Korean National Health Insurance System experimentally held 16 public deliberation workshops since 2012. This study discusses the 5th and 10th workshops among the 16 conducted, using them as a case example to evaluate the utility and informativeness of mini-publics in health policy making. After briefly explaining the method and results of the two workshops, this study reviews the main arguments that call for the use of public deliberation in societal decisions. Based on these arguments, the study concludes that the results of the two workshops are insufficient to serve as useful information for relevant health policy making and the reasons therefor. The study posits that similar to the two workshops, mini-publics sometimes fail to provide informative results for technically oriented questions, result in serious disagreements and fall short of achieving some deliberative ideals, such as equal participation, reasonableness, and fairness. Given that running a public deliberation process is generally cost-consuming, despite its potential benefits, the current widespread applications of mini-publics should be carefully examined.