Controversy Over Changwon Citizens' Voice Board Post
"Greeting Was Rude... Needs Education"
Netizens: "They Were Just Trying to Handle Complaints Quickly"
“What brings you here?” A citizen who visited an administrative welfare center and received this greeting filed a complaint with the local government, sparking controversy. On the 23rd, the complaint posted on the 'Citizen's Voice' board of Changwon Special City on the 8th spread across social networking services (SNS) such as X (formerly Twitter). The author, identified as A, a citizen of Changwon, opened the post titled “Request for Improvement and Training on Greeting Methods for Handling Civil Complaints” by saying, “Two days ago, I visited a nearby administrative welfare center to issue some documents.”
A civil complaint window of a local government, unrelated to the article content [Photo by Asia Economy]
A said, “When I approached the person in charge of issuing the documents, they greeted me by saying, ‘What brings you here?’” and asked, “Isn’t that a very surprising and absurd way to greet someone?” He continued, “Can’t they just say ‘Hello’ without any other greeting? When I visited another administrative welfare center today, they greeted me with ‘How did you come here?’ I also think this greeting is inappropriate.”
He added, “Please, I ask you not to use greetings like ‘What brings you here?’ or ‘How did you come here?’ It really seems very rude,” and urged, “There are very simple greetings like ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye.’ Please provide training on this.”
In response, Changwon City said, “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused during the civil complaint handling process,” and added, “Changwon City conducts various kindness training sessions, including employee training on proper telephone response techniques to improve satisfaction, healing education for civil complaint officers to enhance their response capabilities, and special lectures on strategies for handling unique complaints. We will conduct internal training to ensure that the feedback provided is well reflected and strive to improve citizens’ satisfaction with civil complaint handling.”
Netizens who saw this responded critically, saying things like, “It’s a greeting for quick service, but they complain about it like that,” “Filing a complaint over something like this seems even more unreasonable,” and “Now I understand why people avoid public officials.”
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