The same meal records look different when ranked by amount instead of frequency. We summed disclosed political-funding meal expenses by venue, and the top spot — Hwadam — alone recorded ₩250M. All ten of the highest-spend venues were in Yeouido. This is not a ranking of where lawmakers went most often; it is a ranking of where the largest meal amounts were paid.
Why rank by amount?
Lawmakers must report how they spend political funds to the National Election Commission, and those expenditure records are public. Among them are meal expenses for meetings and dining. The same meal data tells a different story depending on the yardstick, and this time we chose amount paid — the yardstick that answers the bluntest question head-on: where in Yeouido were the largest political-fund meal amounts paid?
Amount shows the scale of spending handled at one place. As on the map’s main toggle, restaurants and bars are grouped together and tallied by venue. There are more than 50,000 meal payments in all (51,040), totaling ₩7.95 billion; of that ₩7.95 billion spread across 9,315 venues, these are the ten largest by amount.
The ten largest by amount paid
At No. 1 Hwadam, meals alone totaled ₩250M. Namdomaru (₩225M) and Gasiri (₩217M) also cleared ₩200M, followed by Donghaedo Hanhan (₩192M), China Pro (₩158M), Singkai (₩157M), Daebanggol (₩132M), Izumi (₩130M), Ido Sikdang (₩121M), and Dawon (₩117M). The gap between first and tenth is 2.14x. Even inside the top tier, Hwadam sits a step above the rest by amount.
Hwadam, Namdomaru, and Gasiri — the three that cleared ₩200M — sum to ₩692M by themselves. Set against an average venue amount of around ₩850,000 across all 9,315 restaurants, Hwadam’s ₩250M is roughly 293 times the average. From No. 4 Donghaedo Hanhan (₩192M) down to No. 10 Dawon (₩117M), seven venues cluster in the ₩100M range. Ranked by amount, the picture is a small set of very high totals, followed by a tight band of other high-spend venues.
Different cuisines, same address
The cuisines split across Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and sashimi, yet the addresses are one neighborhood. All ten are in Yeongdeungpo— on Gukhoe-daero, Eunhaeng-ro, Yeoui-gongwon-ro, within walking distance of the National Assembly. The top of the amount ranking includes several Japanese restaurants (Hwadam, Donghaedo, Izumi), sashimi restaurants (Namdomaru), and Chinese restaurants (China Pro, Singkai). These are formats that fit reserved rooms, courses, and group meals. By amount, the ranking naturally highlights places where one payment can become large.
The cuisine names differ, but the conditions are similar. Japanese, sashimi, and Chinese courses are closer to a fixed spread for several people than to a single à-la-carte dish, which makes each payment easier to scale up. It is the same logic that puts Hwadam and Daebanggol at the same building address, Gukhoe-daero 800. Proximity to the Assembly, reservable rooms, and menus suited to group meals are what define the top of the amount ranking.
How few venues hold up the total
The ₩7.95 billion is not spread evenly across 9,315 venues. The top ten sum to ₩1.70 billion — a fifth (21.4%)of all meal spend; the top fifty reach half (49.3%), and the top hundred reach 60.5%. Put plainly, the top fifty venues — just 0.5% of the 9,315 — account for nearly half of all meal spending.
Only 14 restaurants cleared ₩100M, yet those fourteen places account for 26.8% of all meal spending. At the other end, 9,212 of the 9,315 venues each total under ₩10M, and that vast majority combined accounts for only 39.1%. Political-fund meal spending is widely scattered across thousands of restaurants, but by amount it is strongly concentrated in a few Yeouido venues.
A Yeouido map drawn by amount
Why look all the way down to a restaurant’s payment amount? Political-fund spending is meant to be public, yet disclosed records usually survive only as tables and totals, with the grain inside them hard to see. Place each venue on the map one by one and rank by amount, and the scene hidden by the totals comes into view: a top tier headed by Hwadam’s ₩250M, all within a few hundred meters of the Assembly, and all suited to group meals and larger payments. What a single ₩7.95 billion line cannot show becomes more concrete once the spending is ranked by venue.
Method & source · Meal expenses from political-funding accounting reports disclosed by the National Election Commission, gathered by venue and grouped as restaurants + bars, identical to the map’s main toggle. When converting venue names to coordinates, some were mistakenly matched to a different shop of the same name, so coordinates were verified and merged into a single location. This is a snapshot at the time of payment; the ranking points to the tallied restaurant, not to any particular lawmaker. Data tally · kookrator.