When people hear “political funds,” they tend to picture scenes like meals at meet-and-greets or envelopes of donations. Yet when you add up the ₩40.8 billion worth of receipts lawmakers spent over the course of 2024 by category, the ledger that emerges looks nothing like the picture in your head. Meals made up 2.4%of the total — essentially an afterthought at the very bottom. The place where the most money went was not restaurants but finance. So where did the money actually go?
What political funds are, and why classify them
Lawmakers spend political funds raised through their support associations on political activity, and they report that spending to the National Election Commission. The expenditure records are disclosed item by item, so anyone can see ‘what was spent and how much.’ But the disclosed data is usually a heap of countless individual receipts; look at them one by one and no big picture appears. So we grouped these receipts into a handful of categories by the nature of the spending, summed a full year of money in each, and converted ‘what political funds are really for’ into shares.
The reason for viewing it as shares is simple: to check whether the scene people imagine when they think of political funds matches where that money actually flowed. What gets talked about most in political news is meals, hospitality, and the relationships exchanged at the table. But notoriety and money share are separate matters. Just because an item comes up often does not mean it takes up a large slice of the wallet. Category shares reveal exactly that gap — the distance between ‘what gets attention’ and ‘what the money is spent on.’
Share by category — the biggest box is not restaurants
Lining up the top five categories gives ‘Politics’ (28.2%), ‘Office’ (23.9%), ‘Publicity’ (19.2%), ‘Vehicles’ (9.6%), and ‘Support’ (8.4%). The meal spending we picture as the face of political funds is nowhere in this leading group. Meals are 2.4% of the total — effectively at the very bottom of the list. The first line of the political-fund ledger is taken not by the dinner table everyone thinks of first, but by a category that scarcely catches the eye.
Open the No. 1 category — ‘Politics’ is really finance
The largest chunk is the ‘Politics’ category (28.2%). The name conjures grand political activity, but open it up and most of it is a single line item: financial costs (24.4%). Under the classification scheme, this includes repayment of loans and borrowings, interest, credit card payments, and refunds of donations. In other words, the biggest use of political funds is not flashy political activity but raising and circulating money— borrowing it, spending it, and paying it back.
This part is paradoxical: almost the entire largest box labeled ‘Politics’ is less politics itself than the flow of money needed to run politics. Money is borrowed to begin activity before donations come in, and the debt is repaid with the money that arrives. Within a structure that bridges the timing gap of campaign and legislative costs, the first use of political funds becomes not ‘politics’ but ‘repayment.’ The figure of 24.4% shows the size of that timing gap.
The top three categories alone make two-thirds — political funds are an operating ledger
Next come office (23.9%) and publicity (19.2%). Money goes out on rent, supplies, and deposits, and reaches voters through campaign materials and text messages. Finance, office, and publicity together alone make up two-thirds of the total. Repaying debt, running an office, and getting one’s name out there is where most of the money goes. Political funds are less the cost of grand political acts than something closer to an ‘operating-expense ledger’for keeping a small organization — a lawmaker’s office — running.
The remaining boxes support this reading too. Vehicles (9.6%) are the cost of moving between district and Assembly, and support (8.4%) includes party dues. None of these is a dramatic political event; each is closer to a fixed cost an organization pays to keep running day to day. Spread political funds out as a single household account book, and most of what is written there is ordinary operating expense — rent, interest, telecom, transport — the cost of keeping one small office going. Meals at 2.4% are merely one of the smallest lines in that book.
So what were all those restaurants we examined at length?
So then, what were all those restaurants we examined at length through maps and networks? In money terms, they came to a little over ₩1 billion out of the ₩40.8 billion — just 2.4% of the total, the tip of the iceberg. The most eye-catching item, the one with the most stories to tell, is the very one that takes up the smallest share of the wallet. The reason this series placed each restaurant on the map and counted payments and the density of regulars is that those 2.4% mattered not for the size of the money but for the density of movement. Small as the category is, it records most finely ‘where and with whom they met,’ carrying information no amount of money can measure.
Yet zoom out to the question of where the money goes, and the table sits at the edge of the whole picture. The same data carries entirely different weight depending on the question you ask. Ask ‘where do lawmakers meet?’ and restaurants are the protagonist; ask ‘where do political funds flow?’ and restaurants become a bit part. That two yardsticks — attention and amount — draw such different scenes is itself the core lesson of this ledger.
Why look beyond the meal receipts
This share table matters because it shows where our intuition about political funds goes astray. The most eye-catching item, the one with the most stories to tell, is the very one that takes up the smallest share of the wallet — a paradox. Here lies the lesson of the data: what catches the eye and where the money goes are often two different things. It is also a matter of rules, not people. Not because any one lawmaker is unusual, but because the institution of political funds rests on borrowing, running an office, and spreading a name, the shape of the ledger comes out similar no matter who spends. When we decide what to scrutinize and what to make a topic of, we would do well to look once more at the share table of amounts.
Method & source · The category shares in this analysis come from a separate tally (KA-money) based on the full body of political-fund accounting reports disclosed by the National Election Commission, summing one year of spending (2024, 21st·22nd Assembly) on a monetary basis, with categories following the source data. Because this share table covers all political-fund spending, its scope differs from the ‘meal venues (restaurants)’ that this site’s map covers (the map shows only meal expenses; this table shows total spending). ‘Financial costs’ include loan and borrowing repayments, interest, credit card payments, and refunds of donations. Shares may change if the period (2024) or classification criteria change. The figures are aggregate totals and do not point to any specific lawmaker. Data tally · kookrator.