한국정치자금의 규모와 조달패턴: 선거 관리 위원회의 공식 자료를 중심으로

Abstract

There is a commonly shared belief among Koreans that a critical problem in Korean politics is that is much too costly yet inefficient. The issue of money politics has repeatedly dominated the media and public debate every election year and yet what we know about it is often limited to unscientific hearsay and unsubstantiated claims. This paper uses financial statements reported by local party offices and their political support groups during the 1996-2000 period to unveil the size and sourcing pattern of Korea’s political funds. While the credibility of the official data on political funds has always been in question, this paper argues that, since the 1994 reform of Political Funds Act, the credibility of the official data has much improved and it would be imprudent to judge it useless without a critical analysis. The paper does show that the offi- cial data do provide meaningful and significant patterns which suggest it’s usefulness as an instrument to proxy the actual political funds. Moreover, the real value of the official political funds data used in this analysis is the very fact that it is funds sourced through the “official” channels. While full understanding of the political funding in Korea cannot ignore its illicit nature, there is a more urgent and basic need to understand the officially revealed aspect of political funding and how it impacts upon the political process in South Korea.