Interior ministry moves to curb arbitrary secrecy in information disclosure

The interior ministry said Thursday it will give the public a wider footing to challenge refusals to release official records, publishing a revision to the information disclosure law that narrows the grounds agencies use to withhold documents and opens appeals to decisions the current law leaves beyond challenge.

The revision would let a requester file an objection against any decision an agency makes on an information request. Today only refusals and partial releases can be contested.

The ministry set out five categories of withheld information that account for a disproportionate share of refusals, and specified how each must be read: information confidential under other statutes, material tied to court proceedings or investigations, information whose release would obstruct fair official work, personal data, and material that would harm the legitimate interests of companies.

Agencies will no longer be able to withhold a document simply because it sits in internal deliberation. Refusal on obstruction grounds will be confined to undecided material whose release would undermine fair work or seriously disrupt research and development.

Agencies would also have to publish more on their own initiative, adding health and safety policy material, audit findings, commissioned research results, and the composition, operation and minutes of their committees to the information released in advance of any request.

The revision adds grounds to protect the officials who handle requests, obliging agency heads to take measures to prevent and treat physical or psychological harm from verbal abuse, insults or threats, and it states that requesters must cooperate and may not make unreasonable demands. Requests containing such abuse may be closed, and repeated closures may lead the ministry to suspend the requester's access to the disclosure system, subject to review by the information disclosure committee and the requester's chance to explain.

The appeals period for the committees that handle objections stretches to 14 days from seven, and those committees must meet in person as a rule. Administrative appeals currently heard by provincial and provincial education office tribunals would move to the central administrative appeals commission.

Online requests, which accounted for 86 percent of filings in 2025 against 79 percent in 2018, would fall under the committee's oversight of the disclosure system's operating rules. Agencies would also gain the power to bar new requests from applicants who have not paid disclosure fees.

The public may comment on the draft for 40 days from Friday through Dec. 16, the ministry said.

"This revision is meant to block arbitrary refusals and broaden the grounds for objection so that disclosure is actively expanded, while establishing a sound culture of information disclosure," Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung said in a statement. "Through the revision we will guarantee the people's right to know more solidly."