Now these four parties will be posting their expenditures on their presidential candidate’s homepages every three to seven days, and submit their account books to the solidarity organization once a week. It is historically unprecedented for parties to "report" the details of their campaign spending not to a government agency, but a non-governmental civic group. Even when you stop thinking about whether it's a good idea or not, the politicians and the National Election Commission should be ashamed of themselves.

Korean political history has been a comic repetition of a scene where presidential candidates spend tens of times more than the legal limit, astronomical amounts of money, meaning that the winner is a born criminal who then goes through the motions of wielding the sword of reform. The politicians threw an opportunity to maintain their dignity by the wayside by failing to pass legislation requiring more transparency at the National Assembly, despite the people’s desire to see an end to this vicious cycle.

Now that they’ve agreed to it, each party must actively cooperate with the disclosure program. The National Election Commission, for its part, needs to follow up on the Solidarity’s legal limitations and commence on a multi-faceted campaign supervision program. The Solidarity must make sure its activities don’t cause a debate over the legality of its actions, or that there are accusations of unfairness. If everything goes right, the experiment will eventually be credited with bringing the culture of our elections to a new level.

As one member of Solidarity readily recognizes, the disclosure of campaign spending is in principle not something that should have to be the work of civic groups. This kind of last resort activity should not have to be repeated. As soon as the presidential election is over, the National Assembly needs to move forward on the Political Funds Law and other reform legislation.

November 23, 2002