Songpa-gu also decides to remove political parties’ placards containing slandering and insulting language

As criticism is growing over excessive placards put up by political parties before the general election in April next year, the Seoul metropolitan governments and local governments are issuing an ordinance to pull down political parties’ placards.

On Wednesday, the Songpa-gu office of Seoul announced that it established an ordinance to prohibit political parties’ placards containing hatred, slandering, and insulting language. A district member said Songpa-gu is the first local government to enact such an ordinance to remove placards.

The ordinance, which will take effect on Thursday, states that political parties’ placards containing hatred, slandering, and insulting language will be pulled down after evaluation by an evaluation group of residents. In addition, placards of political parties cannot be hung up in locations that may undermine the safety of driving cars or pedestrians and can be put up only once for 15 days.

The district office set up such an ordinance based on the judgment that its residents are experiencing increased inconvenience due to the revision of the act on the management of outdoor advertisements and promotion of the outdoor advertisement industry in December last year, which allowed the unlimited hanging of placards by political parties.

According to a survey conducted by the Songpa-gu office of its 9,744 residents in August this year, 92.7 percent agreed that the district office should immediately take down political parties’ slandering placards. “We were surprised by how many people participated in the survey as we only expected 1,000 or so at most,” said a member of the district office. The ordinance on political parties’ placards was passed unanimously by the Songpa-gu council on September 26. The applicable placards will begin to be pulled down from November 1.


sojee@donga.com