Wrong now, right then: policy salience in the termination of the South Korean Shutdown Act

Abstract While existing studies acknowledge the political impact of policy termination, research on the dynamic political landscape and the bureaucracy’s strategic action in driving such termination remains limited, particularly in morality policies, where diverse values clash across political perspectives. To address this gap, this study examines South Korea’s Shutdown Act, a regulation on teenage gaming that epitomizes the tension between values relating to adolescent autonomy and youth protection. This research analyzes government press release texts from 2008 to 2022, covering the period from the policy’s adoption to its termination. This article investigates how the government manages policy salience during different stages of the termination process. Findings reveal that policy salience diminishes as policies stabilize over time and intensifies during the termination phase, when it becomes higher compared to earlier stages, including when the policy was first adopted. Ultimately, this study contributes to the policy termination literature by demonstrating that it is a distinct phase of the policy process with defined characteristics. In our case, the observed shifts in policy salience throughout the Shutdown Act’s cycle highlight the political nature of termination, especially in the case of a morality policy.