Sever the structural chains of corruption in local politics

The coming local elections should not be merely a reshuffling of regional power. They should serve as a turning point for severing the structural chains of corruption in local politics.

On Feb.5, police applied for arrest warrants against independent lawmaker Kang Sun-woo (left) and former Seoul city council member Kim Kyung, who are under suspicion of receiving a 100 million won nomination bribe. [NEWS1]

With 104 days remaining until the June 3 local elections, the political world is shifting into full campaign mode after the Lunar New Year holiday. This year’s elections, coming on the heels of a string of nomination-related corruption allegations involving the ruling party, have cast an unusually bright spotlight on the fairness and transparency of candidate selections.

Rumors long circulating about a “corrupt food chain” linking National Assembly lawmakers and local council members surfaced into public view through scandals involving National Assembly Reps. Kang Sun-woo and Kim Byung-ki, both of whom left the Democratic Party (DP) after the scandal broke out. In the case of former Seoul city Council member Kim Kyung — accused of handing Kang 100 million won (nearly $70,000) ahead of the 2022 local elections — allegations have surfaced that companies run by his family secured a series of private contracts with agencies affiliated with the Seoul city government while she rotated through multiple standing committees. At this point, it is difficult to avoid the charge that some local councils are being run like “family businesses.” In districts where a party nomination all but guarantees victory, it is widely whispered that aspiring local council candidates face a “going rate” of tens of millions to 100 million won for party endorsement. If local office has come to function less as a platform for representing residents than as a gateway for business, and if nomination power-brokers in the National Assembly tacitly tolerate this while channeling funds into political coffers, the implications are deeply troubling.

More troubling still is the DP’s apparent lack of urgency about reforming its nomination system, dismissing the allegations against Kang and Kim as mere “human error.” Although recent scandals have centered on the ruling party, the need to make nomination systems more transparent and fair is not a partisan question. In that regard, the Reform Party’s experiment with accepting applications online and using an artificial intelligence platform to help candidates craft policy pledges and campaign strategies — while promoting low-cost elections — comes as a refreshing departure. The success of that experiment remains to be seen, but efforts to lower the barriers to entry in nominations deserve recognition.

The coming local elections should not be merely a reshuffling of regional power. They should serve as a turning point for severing the structural chains of corruption in local politics. Each party must undertake tangible reforms to enhance transparency in the nomination process. Voters, too, must keep watch with unblinking vigilance to ensure that party nominations do not remain the starting point of a cycle of corruption.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.