Some Candidates Spent over 3 Billion Won

It was confirmed that some candidates of the 16th general election, which was held on April 13th 2000, actually spent over 3 billion won for election campaign funds.

The average amount of the election campaign funds that the candidates revealed (the elected and defeated with the second largest number of votes) were 500 million and 10 thousand won. The amount is almost 4.5 times of the legal limit of the election campaign funds (116 million won for the nationwide average), and it represents the turbidity and chaotic nature of the election campaign funds.

Those facts were revealed as a result of the sample survey and interviews on 70 candidates of the last years` general election, which was performed between June-August in 2001. This research was a part of a project, the `comparative research on the political fund system in Korea-America-Japan`, which was conducted by the Donga-Ilbo, the Research Center for the International Affairs of Yonsei University, and the Asia Foundation in America.

It was the first time in Korea that a mass media company and a learned circle jointly examined the overall condition of the incomings and outgoings of political funds based on the candidates` direct closed statements. The Research Center for the International Affairs of Yonsei University will hold a seminar at New Millennium Hall of Yonsei University at 2:00 pm. on 10th.

32 candidates said that they spent over 500 million won during the 4.13 general election, including 11 people (15.9 percent) spent over 900 million won, 9 people (13.0 percent) spent 700-900 million won, and 12 people (17.4 percent) spent 500-700 million won.

16 candidates (23.2 percent) spent 300-500 million won, 10 candidates (14.5 percent) spent 100-300 million won, and only 11 candidates (15.9 percent) spent less than 100 million won. These results mean that more than 80 percent of the candidates confessed their violation against the election law. One candidate refused to reveal his expenditure.

Especially, a candidate of the New Millennium Democratic Party (NMDP), who ran for the election in Seoul, admitted that the central party fostered the violation against the election law. "I received 500 million won from the central party as a supporting fund. I recognized that the candidates of the strategic and competing electorates, such as the `386 candidates,` received similar amount of the supporting funds."

But the revealed amounts are just the expenses for the legally sanctioned campaign period. Thus, adding the indirect and incidental expenses from the preparation period, the party officials generally analyzed that the total of a candidates` election-related expenditure would amounted 2-4 times (average 1-2 billion won) of the revealed amounts.

Therefore, the party officials estimated the total expenses of the 4.13 general election that the 1040 candidates, including 621 candidates of the three major parties, spent were one trillion won.

According to the survey, the average election expenses of each party`s candidates are as follow: 472 million won for the NMDP, 432 million won for the Grand National Party, 780 million won for the United Liberal Democrats, and 631 million won for the independents.

The organization management cost consisted the largest portion (68.1 percent) of the expenditure followed by the expenses for public relations (19.9 percent) and administration (8.6 percent). It represents that the old style of election campaign, which depends on the mobilization of the people through organizations, was still the major campaign method.

The fund raising (average 518.07 million won per candidate) methods are as follow: 287.43 million won (55.4 percent) from the candidates` personal funds, 133.03 million won (25.7 percent) from the supporter`s organizations, and 97.61 million won from the central parties. Thus, the candidates raised their election funds mostly through unofficial routes instead of the official supporting organizations.

Park Sung-Won swpark@donga.com