투명사회를 위한 정보공개센터

Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)

The Political funds, obviously, shall only be used for
political activities, not for personal expenses or wrongful purposes.
However, the money has long been misused such as being treated as ‘pocket money’
for politicians. The CFOI (Center for Freedom of Information), last year,
disclosed some dubious gas charge expenditures by analyzing congressmen Chung Byung
Gug’s political funds spending. And then we suggested that you too use the Freedom
of Information System to keep an eye on your own local congressmen.

CFOI requested the revenue and expenditure reports of
political funds for the Grand National Party (GNP) and the Democratic Party. The
National Election Commission (NEC) released the data to CFOI, and we especially
analyzed the expenses for ‘organization activities’ with spreadsheet. Today, we
would like to share the details of the GNP’s ‘organization activity’ spending.
The GNP’s activity expenses were over 10 billion won a year. Looking into the data,
we could find some interesting parts. 

One of the several interesting things CFOI found out
was that the staff members of the GNP HQ had spend huge amount of money at ‘Sokcho
Seafood Stew’ restaurant. Searching through the data set with the key word
‘Sokcho Seafood Stew’, CFOI even found one expenditure that was over 8 million
won at the restaurant. CFOI found out that they spent over 99 million won under
the name of ‘Sokcho Seafood Stew’ in 2010. We find it very odd for a party to
spend such an enormous amount of money at a single restaurant. 

Another thing was the operation expense from majority
leader’s office. About 800,000 won was mysteriously spent at a movie theater,
CGV.

Not only that, CFOI found out that the office
of GNP’s secretary general had bought office equipment at a luxury department
store. Since the items they purchased were not specified, we don’t know exactly
what they bought from the department but it makes us wonder if they really had
to buy room equipment at a luxury store. Apart from these, it indeed was weird
and even fishy that the party had spent too much money on dining in expensive
hotels andtoo much money making placards or New Year’s Cards.

Of course, they can enjoy feasts at hotels, watch
movies, or spend enormous amounts of money hanging out with their supporters or
party officials, but with their own money, not political funds from citizens.
But we just wish that politicians would spend more prudently the money
contributed by the citizens for better politics.

 original version of this post