Civil Petition Processing Times: What They Mean, How They're Counted, and What Happens Past the Deadline

Article 17(1) of the Civil Petitions Treatment Act(민원 처리에 관한 법률) requires the head of each administrative agency to preset and publish, by type of legal civil petition, the processing period running from receipt of the application to the completion of processing. Paragraph 2 requires that period to be set separately for the receiving agency, any agency it passes through, any agency it consults, and the agency that makes the final disposition, which is why each petition page here lists Received, Routed, Consulted, and Processed stages separately.

The single table that collects all of those standards is the Civil Petition Processing Standards Table(민원처리기준표). Article 36(1) requires the Minister of the Interior and Safety to compile the processing agency, period, required documents, procedure, and application method set out in relevant statutes into one table, publish it in the official gazette, and post it on the integrated e-government portal, Gov24(정부24). Agencies must report changes immediately so the table stays current(paragraph 2). This app's data is exactly that table.

A legal civil petition, as used here, means an application for authorization, permission, approval, a license, or a franchise required by statute, or a registration, report, or certificate issuance. Simple inquiries or suggestions run on a different track and are mostly not included in this app.

Article 19 splits the counting method into three cases. All three exclude Saturdays and public holidays.

• 5 days or fewer: counted in hours from the moment of receipt, with one business day equal to 8 working hours. Gov24's own example: a 3-day petition received at 2 PM on a Tuesday is due by 2 PM the following Friday.
• 6 days or more: counted in days, including the day of receipt as day one. An 8-day petition received on a Tuesday is due by the following Thursday(two weekend days are skipped).
• Weeks, months, or years: the day of receipt counts, and Civil Act(민법) Articles 159 through 161 apply by reference: count by the calendar, and if the last day falls on a Saturday or public holiday, the deadline moves to the next day. A 1-month petition received on September 20 is due by October 19.

So a 7-day period on this app runs a little over ten calendar days, and a 30-day period runs about six weeks. We note that rough calendar sense next to the day count on each petition page, though public holidays push it further out, so for the exact due date, ask the receiving office for the expected completion date when you file.

Immediate is recorded as 0 days in the standards table, and Gov24(정부24) writes it as within 3 business hours. Without delay means no day count was fixed at all, for cases like a birth or marriage report, which are processed right away within the case's own circumstances and available staff.

Enforcement Decree(시행령) Article 21(1): if an agency needs cooperation from another agency, needs to verify facts or conditions on site, or faces a natural disaster or similar cause that makes it hard to finish on time, it may extend the period once, within the bounds of that petition's own processing period. If it's still not enough, it may extend once more with the petitioner's consent. Paragraph 2 makes clear that a simple workload increase, or a delay or absence of the assigned staff member, is not a valid reason to extend.

Paragraph 3: an extension must be notified in writing without delay, stating the reason and the new expected completion date. Going quiet and simply running late does not satisfy this article. You can ask the receiving office or the department in charge whether an extension notice was actually issued.

Enforcement Decree(시행령) Article 23: if 30 days have passed since receipt without completion, or if the petitioner explicitly asks, the agency must provide the current progress and the expected completion date in writing, through an information network, or by mail, and in principle must do so again every 30 days after that. This can be skipped if the agency already announced that it publishes progress on its website or elsewhere.

Act(법) Article 27: once processing is complete, the result must be notified in writing, and if refused, the reason for refusal and the available remedy must be notified together(paragraph 3). If a result notice is missing the remedy, that's also worth asking about.

Act(법) Article 35(1): if you object to a refusal of a legal civil petition, you may file a written objection within 60 days of receiving the refusal with the head of that administrative agency. Paragraph 2: the agency must decide whether to accept the objection and notify you in writing within 10 days of receiving it, though it may extend that by up to 10 more days if unavoidable, and must notify you of the reason for the extension.

Paragraph 3: whether or not you filed an objection, you may still bring an administrative appeal under the Administrative Appeals Act(행정심판법) or an administrative lawsuit under the Administrative Litigation Act(행정소송법). An objection is the faster route of asking the same agency again; an appeal or lawsuit is the route of contesting it outside that agency. Which one fits depends on the case, so we don't make that call here.