Rank meal expenses not by amount or payment count, but by how many distinct lawmakers visited each venue, and another pattern appears. A place visited once each by a hundred people rises above one visited a hundred times by a single person. In disclosed political-funding records, the top venue — Gasiri — was visited by 228 lawmakers. That is roughly two of every three sitting members using the same restaurant.
Why distinct lawmakers, not amount or payments?
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. Meals are a small share of total political funds, but the records are numerous enough to leave a dense trace of everyday meeting places and dining routes.
The same meal data surfaces different restaurants depending on the yardstick. Sort by amount and large bills move venues upward; sort by number of payments and repeated places come forward. We chose a third yardstick: the count of distinct lawmakers. This measure is not swayed by one person’s repetition or a single large bill. A lawmaker who visits the same place a hundred times still counts as one; a hundred lawmakers visiting once each count as a hundred. So this ranking shows which venues were used broadly across lawmakers. As on the map’s main toggle, restaurants and bars are grouped together and tallied by venue.
The ten venues with the widest overlap
Gasiri, in first, was visited by 228 lawmakers. With 300 seats in the 22nd National Assembly, that means more than two of every three sitting members used a single restaurant. At that breadth, it is less just a good restaurant than a practical meal-and-meeting base around the Assembly. Hwadam (207) and Namdomaru (194) follow near the 200 mark, then the tied Daebanggol and Sohojeong (187), China Pro (176), and Donghaedo Hanhan (167). No single place dominates; several venues of similar scale share the overlap.
A few Yeouido blocks hold the overlap
The cuisines split across Korean, Japanese, sashimi, set menu, and Chinese, yet the addresses are nearly all one neighborhood. Nine of the top ten are in Yeongdeungpo— on Gukhoe-daero, Eunhaeng-ro, Gukhoe-daero 76-gil, within walking distance of the National Assembly and the Members’ Office Building. Most also have private rooms or group seating. The menus diverge; the coordinates overlap.
The only one outside Yeouido is eighth-place Chambokjip (Mapo), and even that is about a ten-minute drive. Though lawmakers hold districts across the country, the venues broadly shared through political-fund meals cluster in front of the Assembly. The everyday geography of Yeouido shows up more strongly than the nationwide spread of districts.
Not one place, but a cluster
What stands out is how tight the top tier is. From first to fifth, the visiting-lawmaker counts run 228, 207, 194, 187, 187. Rather than one overwhelming venue reigning, several meal-and-meeting options of similar scale have formed. Lawmakers do not concentrate on one place; they divide across a handful within walking distance. That is why the ranking shows broad reach while still looking relatively flat.
How many venues reached 100 lawmakers?
Step past the top ten to the whole distribution and it becomes clear how rare this breadth is. Rank all 9,300-odd venues by the same yardstick and only 21 restaurants in the whole country were visited by 100 or moredistinct lawmakers. Just 8 cleared 150, and only two — Gasiri and Hwadam — passed 200. Lower the bar to 50 and you still reach only 53. The remaining thousands appear in the records of only one or two lawmakers.
The figure of 21 venues above 100 shows that broad lawmaker overlap is concentrated in a very small set of places. And of those 21, 18 are in Yeongdeungpo (Yeouido). A restaurant receiving such a wide span of lawmakers does not happen just anywhere. It mostly happens in a few alleys walkable from the Assembly, at places with group rooms or private seating. The tightness of the top ten (228, 207, 194, 187, 187) is a zoom on that narrow band; below it, the curve flattens fast at the 50- and 20-lawmaker lines.
What lawmaker count tells us
In the end, the ranking by lawmakers visited draws not a map of taste but a map of overlap. What makes the ranking is not which place tastes better, but which venues received meetings and meals from the widest range of lawmakers, ruling party and opposition alike. One restaurant visited by 228 lawmakers records a political routine that repeats and overlaps within a few hundred meters of the Assembly. That is why the restaurant ranking becomes another map of how a narrow radius called Yeouido shapes lawmakers’ common routes.
Why look all the way down to a restaurant’s visiting-lawmaker count? Political-fund spending is meant to be public, yet disclosed records usually survive only as tables and totals, with who gathered where hard to see. Place each venue on the map one by one and rank by distinct lawmakers, and the common places hidden by totals come into view. Gasiri’s 228 is not big money but broad overlap, and the fact that this overlap concentrates in a few alleys in front of the Assembly is exactly what a summary table never tells you.
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. ‘Lawmakers visited’ counts distinct lawmakers, not the number of payments. 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 tally; the ranking points to the tallied restaurant, not to any particular lawmaker. Data tally · kookrator.