The Economic World Claims, “Revenues and Expenditures of Political Funds Must Be Opened to Public”

To raise the transparency of the political funds issue, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) will request to open an account describing the revenues and expenditure of the political funds to the public and have auditing accounts such as the company’s accounting reports to the politics.

A high-ranking official of the FKI, on October 31, said, “Under the era of globalization, not only is politicians’ request for the transparency of the enterprises necessary but also politics itself must strengthen its transparency.” He remarked, “The system is already being operated in developed countries to make the political funding known,” and “It can easily be operated if politicians opens an account with the National Election Commission (NEC) and record an account for the revenues and expenditures through this account.”

The plan to improve the political funding system, which is under investigation by the external research institute responsible for the study, has the gist: when an enterprise financially supports politics, the board of directors must vote for the scheme.

The FKI concluded that nowadays the demand for political funding is too great and therefore, it plans to claim to cut back the demand for funds through the reformation of district party chapters and the system of the political parties to the politics.

Meantime, because the FKI decided on a policy at the meeting of group chairmen on September 30 that it would not accept the politicians’ requests for political funds unless the systematic reformation on the political funds should be accomplished, the FKI’s request is expected to press politicians hard.

Jong sik Kong kong@donga.com