Soboru on Daejeo-ro in Gangseo-gu, Busan. Open this venue’s political-funding record and all 118 lawmaker payments over five years belong to a single person. No other lawmaker appears. Share: 100%. Here, share means one lawmaker’s peak payments divided by all lawmaker payments at that restaurant. This is not a ranking of expensive restaurants; it measures how strongly a venue’s lawmaker payments concentrate around one person.
One person, 118 times
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| One lawmaker’s payments | 118 |
| All lawmaker payments here | 118 (1 lawmaker) |
| Share | 100% |
| Cumulative amount | about ₩2.03M |
| Per visit | about ₩17,000 |
Each payment was in the ₩10,000–17,000 range. This is not a high-priced occasion or a large entertainment bill; it is a relatively low-cost payment repeated 118 times. Once or twice could be coincidence, ten times looks like habit, but 118 times points to a real daily radius. The key fact is narrower: none of this venue’s lawmaker payments came from anyone else. Soboru was not just a frequently used restaurant; its lawmaker-payment record was entirely concentrated in one person.
Why ‘share’?
We brought a new yardstick to the data. Share = one lawmaker’s peak number of payments ÷ that restaurant’s total lawmaker payments. Of every lawmaker payment logged at a venue, it is the slice taken by the single most frequent user. A low share means the venue was spread across many lawmakers; a high share means payments were concentrated in one person. The same count can mean different things: a restaurant with 100 payments tells a wholly different story if 100 people came once than if one person came 100 times.
Lawmakers must report how they spend political funds to the National Election Commission, and those 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 show who repeatedly used which places. Share is the lens that reads repetition and concentration together.
Venues concentrated around one person
Soboru is not alone. Rank by share and other venues with payments concentrated around one lawmaker appear. Suragan, a Korean restaurant in Mapo, logged 158 payments from one lawmaker for a 99.4% share: 158 of 159 payments by one person. Gangga, a haejang-guk place in Jung-gu, saw 160 payments and a 95.8% share. With per-payment amounts around ₩150,000–170,000, these two differ from Soboru. The same share metric puts low-cost repeat meals and likely meeting-oriented meals on one scale.
High-share cases are not limited to one or two examples. There are 89 venues with 10-plus payments and a share above 99%, and 35with 20-plus payments and a share above 90%. From Aludo, a cafe in Hwaseong (74), to Pungnyeon Mokjang Garden, a Korean set-menu place in Yangpyeong (66, around ₩1.4M each), to Namgung, a Chinese restaurant in Busan’s Seo-gu (48), cases where one lawmaker accounted for nearly all lawmaker payments at a venue are scattered across the country. The price points, cuisines, and regions differ. What they share is unusually strong concentration in one person.
Suragan is high on both count and share
Among them, Mapo’s Suragan is high on both count and share. Of 159 lawmaker payments over five years, 158 came from one person. At nearly ₩170,000 a payment, this was probably not just a quick coffee; meals may well have included guests. Even so, by lawmaker-payment records, the venue is almost entirely tied to one lawmaker. Soboru is low-cost repetition; Suragan is higher-cost repetition. A 99.4% share puts both cases in the same frame: lawmaker payments at the venue were concentrated around one person.
This is not a tour of fashionable restaurants. It is a list of venues where one lawmaker’s payments repeat heavily. Some look like low-cost everyday meals; others look more like meeting meals. Share lets those cases sit in the same table and makes the degree of concentration comparable.
Why this share matters
Political-fund spending is meant to be public, yet disclosed records usually survive only as tables and totals, making it hard to see who repeatedly used which places. Share reveals two things the totals obscure. One is a trace of routine: one person returning to the same venue over years. The other is concentration: that routine can account for nearly 100% of a venue’s lawmaker payments. The same receipt can be a mundane habit and, at the same time, a public record worth examining. We prejudge neither side; with the yardstick of share, we let repetition and concentration show.
Method & source · From political-funding accounting reports disclosed by the National Election Commission (meals, 2020–2024), repeated payments by a single lawmaker to the same venue were grouped by name and area and counted. ‘Share’ is one lawmaker’s peak number of payments (maxMemberVisits) divided by that venue’s total lawmaker payments (count). A single payment may cover several people’s meals, and the same venue name may refer to different branches. 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 one location. Lawmakers’ real names are not disclosed. Data tally · kookrator.