Policy Review

Youth 1st Street,
the Pulse of the Young

Open Online Policy Discussion Platform for Youth

An online platform has been launched for young people to share their stories
from all over the country. It's a specialized site for youth
policy proposals where anyone can share their opinions honestly and
propose solutions. Now youth themselves can make their policy ideas a reality.
What would you propose if you were one of them?

Written by Park Ji-yeon Photos courtesy of Youth 1st Street

Youth Policy for and by the Nation's Youth!

Over the years, the government has made numerous efforts to create policies that help young people with what they really need. However, this hasn't been enough to avoid criticism or a lack of interest from young people themselves, and these have tended to be insufficient considering the overall lives of youth, beyond simply employment policies. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety reviewed these issues and came up with the idea to create a sounding board where young people could share their concerns and propose solutions. This was how Youth 1st Street, an online and offline platform for youth policies, was created last year.

The platform is based on *Gwanghwamoon 1st Street, an initiative that drew immense public interest last summer. It gave people a chance to propose the very policies that they thought would affect their own lives, and the response from young people has been tremendous.

*Gwanghwamoon 1st Street : Gwanghwamoon 1st Street was an online and offline policy proposal platform that was operated by the Citizens Advisory Committee for Presidential Transition, part of the State Affairs Planning Advisory Committee. It was open from May 25, 2017, right after the new Moon administration came to office, until July 12, 2017.

Youth 1st Street Maximizes Youth Access

The defining characteristic of Youth 1st Street is that anyone can propose policies through the online platform.

The website menu (www.youth1st.kr) is composed of online suggestions, roundtable meetings and youth events. There's also a social media account to reach out to young target audiences. A Facebook profile allows feedback, while also sharing information about Youth 1st Street events. The platform has given voice to a realistic and detailed exchange concerning the problems faced by young people, such as housing, debt, work, the stability of their livelihoods, social welfare and cultural issues.

Young people are invited to offer their suggestions with sincerity and openness to each new opinion. For example, the opinion that “We need social spaces just for youth” received a wide range of comments, including detailed plans for implementing it, such as, "We don’t have to build new buildings. Each community has many facilities that close after 6 p.m. We could use those," and, "There are libraries, social welfare centers, senior centers, et cetera, that we could use if we put our minds to it.”

Offline Youth 1st Street Roundtable Meetings

Additionally, six regional offline roundtable meetings have been held to allow the voices of young people to be heard more effectively by their elders. This includes opinions from various youth organizations, such as the National Youth Policy Network and the Youth Union.

Let’s hope that Youth 1st Street becomes a long-lasting institution, so that we may have inclusive youth policies that place the young people of the nation at the heart of policy planning.