피스코드 PeaceCode.net

about “KWEON, Ohyeon” /kwən, ohyən/

Building Korea’s Digital Agora for Civic Dialogue and Action.
Public-interest technology and digital commons for peaceful lives and a peaceful world.

Beyond openness and connection, accumulation and automation—through technologies of trust and cooperation, of sharing and liberation—I build platforms and collectives that help good people and citizens contribute to democracy, the commons, and peace. My hope is that free and joyful individuals, trusting and cooperating with one another, can build abundant and sustainable communities, and live peaceful lives in a peaceful world.

I currently work at Parti Cooperative and Code for Korea.

Current Roles

– Chair, Parti Cooperative (2015–present)
– Organizer, Code for Korea (2020–present)
– Member, AI Democracy Division, Presidential Council on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy
– Advisor on Social and Solidarity Economy, Ministry of the Interior and Safety of Korea

Biography

KWEON, Ohyeon is a digital democracy activist who builds digital civic squares and civic collaboration platforms to expand civic space and social capital; a digital social and solidarity economy entrepreneur who turns technology and AI into commons to expand social assets and public goods; a civic hacker who builds civic hacking projects with fellow citizens, who bring their own expertise, to drive social innovation; and an advocate of democratic technology and AI. He has built digital public squares in Korea since 2001—platforms, tools, and communities where citizens dialogue, deliberate, and act together. His vision is to make digital technology and AI belong to citizens, and to realize a peaceful digital democratic republic and a basic universal society, built on inclusion and solidarity, abundance and sustainability.

He started in electoral politics. From 2001 to 2004, he ran internet operations for the Democratic Labor Party, Korea’s progressive labor-based party, working with its Busan chapter and on National Assembly campaigns. He planned Pangari, the party’s online media platform, and served on its Internet Party Committee—through the years the party first entered the National Assembly, winning ten seats in the 2004 general election. That was the first public square he built online.

In the 2000s, as a product manager and engineering lead at Daum Communications, he helped build Agora, an online public square that drew more than a million visitors a day and became the backbone of citizen mobilization during the 2008 candlelight protests. He also led development for Tistory and Daum View (Bloggernews), shaping the foundations of Korea’s citizen media ecosystem.

In July 2012, at an open data camp run by Code Namu (Code Tree), a volunteer civic-hacking community, he picked up a draft called Ansim Hospital—a map of clinic prescription data to help people choose where to seek care—and built it out as Ansim-i, one of Korea’s first civic hacking projects. To carry it forward he started a civic tech community named PeaceCode, the name he still writes under today. In 2013, he founded UFOfactory, a social enterprise that supported digital transformation and service development for more than 1,200 nonprofits and social ventures. UFOfactory merged with Slowalk in 2016, where he served as CEO and incubated Stibee, an email newsletter platform. In 2024, he reopened a public-interest technology incubator line inside Parti, and continues to run it today.

In 2015, he founded Parti, dedicated to digital democracy. It was incorporated as a social cooperative in 2018 and completed its organizational merger in 2020. Parti is a digital agora for civic dialogue and action—a public square for the digital age, led by its crew members and supported by citizens. The cooperative form was itself a choice: for a public square to remain beyond the reach of capital or any government, citizens must own it directly.

Parti’s work centers on two interconnected missions. The first is sustaining the digital citizens’ commons where civic life happens: Campaigns.do, a platform for citizen campaigning, fact-checking, and collective action; Mixon, an appropriate-technology platform that lets nonprofits and cooperatives build their own participatory spaces; and Galaxy Voting, Star-to-Star Dialogue, and Korea Talks, independently developed dialogue tools that visualize opinion landscapes and match citizens across differences for one-to-one dialogue. The second is building governance solutions that connect citizens to decision-making: DemosX, a citizen-government collaboration platform that powers Democracy Seoul, Gwanghwamun 1st Avenue, and the Presidential Committee for National Cohesion’s public engagement platform, enabling the full pipeline from citizen proposal to deliberation to policy; and Townhall, a large-scale online voting and deliberation platform used for participatory budgeting and citizen assemblies.

These platforms are grounded in practice. For over a decade, Parti has convened up to twenty offline deliberations, living labs, and civic workshops every month—more than 215 documented public forums reaching 56,620 direct participants, while 5.4 million citizens have engaged across Parti’s digital platforms (as of 2025). Every tool Parti built was shaped by what was first learned in real rooms with real citizens. Twenty-six people now work at Parti full time, alongside more than twenty part-time collaborators.

In 2018, he proposed Facing the Ocean (FTO), a civic tech network connecting hackers and activists across Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, and led it as a principal organizer. In 2020, as an organizer at Code for Korea, he proposed and led the Mask App and Personal Safety Number projects—among Korea’s internationally recognized civic tech responses to COVID-19, for which Code for Korea received the Minister’s Award from Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT. He has also served as co-chair of the FactCheck.net Foundation (2021–2023), Korea’s first crowdsourced fact-checking platform.

Today, he serves on Korea’s Presidential Council on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy as a member of its AI Democracy Division, and as an advisor to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety on social and solidarity economy. Both Parti Cooperative and Kweon himself have received Presidential Commendations from the Government of Korea—Kweon in 2021 for his work on Korea’s COVID-19 response, and Parti in 2026 for building a citizen-led digital civic square and for supporting citizens’ self-organized digital activity during and after the 12·3 martial law crisis. Parti’s work has been recognized across Korean society—by government, civil society, labor, media, the social economy, academia, and international networks—a breadth that reflects its identity as a digital agora belonging to all citizens.

Two goals shape the work he is doing now. The first is to grow the citizen-owned square back to the scale Agora once had: the distance between a million visitors a day and where Parti’s platforms stand today is the distance he is working to close. The second is to build an organization influential enough that digital democracy activists can make a stable living from this work.

Across every chapter of his work, one conviction has remained constant: the digital public square should belong to citizens—not to capital or governments. That is what he has built, and what he continues to build.

Awards & Recognition

  • From the Government of Korea
    • 2026 — Presidential Commendation, ICT Service Merit Award (Parti Cooperative) — for building a citizen-led digital civic square and supporting citizens’ self-organized digital activity during and after the 12·3 martial law crisis
    • 2021 — Presidential Commendation, Government Performance Evaluation (individual) — for work on Korea’s COVID-19 response
    • 2020 — Ministerial Award (Ministry of Science and ICT), 1st iNews24 Social DNA Innovation Awards (Code for Korea, for the COVID-19 Mask App and Personal Safety Number projects)
  • From Civil Society and the Democracy Movement
    • 2026 — Special Prize, 7th Roh Hoe-chan Award (Parti Cooperative)
    • 2023 — Encouragement Prize, Korea Democracy Awards (Parti Cooperative; Korea Democracy Foundation)
  • From Labor
    • 2025 — Public Interest Award, Korean Government Employees’ Union (Parti Cooperative)
  • From Media and Journalism
    • 2026 — Excellence Award, Media Literacy Awards, Korean Society for Journalism & Communication Studies (Parti Cooperative, for its citizen fact-checking project and Factcheckathon)
    • 2025 — Open Data Special Prize, 8th Korea Data Journalism Awards (Parti Cooperative)
  • From the Social Economy and Innovation Communities
    • 2023 — Outstanding Social Economy Enterprise Award (Parti Cooperative; Korea Social Enterprise Promotion Agency & Amazon Web Services)
    • 2021 — Outstanding Award, 3rd Korea Social Innovation Changemakers
  • From the Technology and Design Communities
    • 2025 — Civic Tech Award, Human Technology Awards (Parti Cooperative)
    • 2019 — iF Design Award, Service Design Category (Democracy Seoul)
    • 2018 — Grand Prize, Special Category, Human Technology Awards
  • From International Networks
    • 2024 — Global Fact-checking Fund Build Grant Recipient, International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN)
    • 2021 — Korean Civil Society Delegate, OGP Global Summit (Seoul)

Public Service Appointments

  • Current
    • Presidential Council on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Member, AI Democracy Division
    • Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Advisor, Social and Solidarity Economy Civilian Advisory Group
    • Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Member, Policy Advisory Committee, Civic Innovation Division
    • Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, Member, Policy Advisory Committee (AI subdivision)
    • Korean Association for Policy Studies, Board Member
    • Changbi Foundation for Culture, Board Member
    • World-Changing Dreams (NGO), Board Member
  • Former
    • Civilian Member, 3rd Korea Open Government Committee
    • Civilian Member, 1st 2050 Carbon Neutrality Committee (Citizen Participation Division)
    • Civilian Member, 4th Civil Society Development Committee (Presidential Decree)
    • Principal (1st & 2nd), AYARF (Asia Young Activist & Researcher Forum)
  • Selected Civic Projects
    • Personal Safety Number (2021) — Proposed and built with Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission and Code for Korea’s civic developers. Replaced handwritten visitor logs with privacy-preserving codes to protect citizens’ personal data; produced implementation guides and sample code for Kakao, Naver, and PASS, and the KDCA’s safety-number generator.
    • Korea Peace Campaign — Digital Advocacy (2021–) — Ran the digital campaign as part of a civil-society coalition. endthekoreanwar.net, in Korean, Japanese, and English; about 113,538 signatures (point-in-time figure, per source).

Career History

  • 2015–present | Chair, Parti Cooperative
    • Master Planner, Democracy Seoul, Seoul Metropolitan Government (2017–2019)
    • Co-Chair, FactCheck.net Foundation (concurrent, 2021–2023)
  • 2020–present | Founder & Organizer, Code for Korea
  • 2013–2020 | Founder & CEO, UFOfactory (social enterprise; merged with Slowalk in 2016, served as CEO of the merged entity)
  • 2011–2012 | Digital Business Development Team, Cheil Worldwide
  • 2006–2010 | Product Manager & Engineering Lead, Daum Communications
  • 2004–2005 | Software Engineer, Daewoo Information Systems
  • 2001–2004 | Internet Lead, Democratic Labor Party (Busan chapter and National Assembly campaigns); planner of Pangari, the party’s online media platform; member of its Internet Party Committee

Writing, Interviews & Talks

Writing, interviews, talk materials, and the press coverage they drew, gathered by theme. The bracket before each entry marks what kind of material it is. Anything not yet grouped under a theme sits at the top. More writing at peacecode.net.

Democratic AI
Democracy and AI
  • [Talk] Democracy and AI — slides, in Korean. A diagnosis of democracy in the age of AI, and a response.
The Digital Public Sphere and the Commons
Parti and the Digital Public Square
Other Press
  • “Parti Co-op Receives a Presidential Commendation for ICT Service Merit” — Lifein, 24 April 2026. Awarded 21 April 2026 at the Science and ICT Day ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Communications Commission, for building a citizen-led digital civic square and for contributing to citizens’ self-organized digital activity during the 12·3 martial law crisis. Primary source for the 2026 commendation’s title, date, and citation.
  • “Open Up More of the Public Data Behind Peace of Mind” — Bloter, December 2012. On Ansim-i (formerly Ansim Hospital) and the four asks he presented at the Korea Semantic Web Conference: open access, standardization, an ecosystem, and seed funding. Primary source for the origin of the name PeaceCode.

Contact

  • Email: ohyeon@parti.coop / rest515@gmail.com
  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ohyeon-kweon
  • Twitter/X: @rest515
  • Blog: peacecode.net
  • Parti: parti.coop
  • Code for Korea: codefor.kr