The revenue structure of Korean political parties

Abstract

The financial reports of Korean political parties have not attracted the attention of researchers: because under-the-table-funds are judged to exceeds legal fund and such funds are omitted from the reports. Yet, even though they are imperfect, our examination of the financial reports. 1997-2000. shows that many facts about the flow of Koreas political funds can be discovered from them. First of them is. the relative importance of the central party's share is decreasing, while the district party's share is increasing. From this, we can say that decentralization is now under way in political fund raising. Second, in the case of the central party, a change of partisanship in the Blue House has a large influence on the political parties revenues; in the district party's case, the difference is not that big. At the level of the district party, whether the chairperson of the district party is the Member of the Assembly or not has a greater influence on revenues than the partisanship of the Blue House. From this, we can expect that if decentralization in political fund raising further progresses. the influence of presidential partisanship has on political fund raising will be mitigated. Third, in the event of a National Assembly or the local elections, the central party shares state subsidy with the district parties. However, in the event of a presidential election or no election at all, it appears that all the funds are used by the central party.