Can Lee Jun-seok’s Reform Party’s “990,000-Won Campaign” Turn Korean Politics Upside Down?

[Choice Times=Dae-Joong Kwak, Chair of the Reform Party] 

“Don’t go into politics if you don’t have money.”

It is one of the phrases you hear most often once you enter the political world.

Of course, the phrase was probably coined to “persuade” (or fend off) so-called political drifters—people who lack special ability or character, are lost in delusions, believe everyone else in the world is stupid or evil, and wander around Yeouido as if the world would be turned upside down the moment they step forward.

Even so, rather than a politics that says“Don’t do politics if you have no money,”I want to create a politics that says“Even without money, have the courage to try.”

That message is precisely what lies behind the Reform Party’s proposal of a “990,000-won election campaign.”

Some people ask, “How is a 990,000-won campaign even possible?”
For National Assembly or metropolitan mayoral elections, perhaps not. But for local council elections, I believe it is entirely achievable.

Moreover, given the very purpose of local council elections, I firmly believe they must be elections that cost little—or no—money.

Anyone who has run a business knows this: the biggest expenses are

procurement costs, and labor costs. Add to that rent.
Everything else—electricity, utilities, miscellaneous fees—are marginal compared to those three.

Elections are no different. publicity costs and labor costs dominate almost the entire campaign budget.

If someone says they spent 40 million won in a local council election, it would not be far from the truth to say that about 20 million went to publicity and another 20 million to labor.

First, publicity costs.

These mainly consist of posters, banners, and printed campaign booklets.

Starting with campaign booklets: personally, I cannot understand why paper booklets are still necessary in this day and age. I even wish there were a joint declaration by the political establishment saying,“From local council elections to presidential elections, all paper campaign materials will be abolished.”
(Of course, printing companies would erupt in protest.)

In local elections in particular, voters receive six or seven different ballots—district councilors, district heads, city councilors, mayors, superintendents of education, plus proportional representatives. Most voters do not even look at the campaign materials. With nearly thirty candidates on the ballot, many people do not even glance at the posters.

When voters can barely remember the name of the district head candidates, how many will carefully collect and read the booklets of local council candidates? The answer is: very few. On election day, most people simply search online—“Who is running in my neighborhood?”—and head to the polling station.

My personal view is that these materials should be consolidated into integrated digital campaign materials, turning elections into completely paperless elections. Korea prides itself on being an “IT powerhouse,” yet reform in this area lags far behind. This, too, is something politics should reflect on.

Second, banners.

With banners, the cost of hanging them far exceeds the cost of printing them.

A typical political banner you see on the street is about five to six meters long. Printing one through a major advertising company costs only about 15,000 won. But hanging it costs over 100,000 won per banner.

In local council elections, candidates are allowed two banners per administrative district. Since a typical constituency covers four to five districts, a candidate needs at most about ten banners.

That means printing costs of 150,000 won—300,000 won at most.
Yet the installation costs alone can reach 2 million won. A classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

Personally, I believe political banners should disappear altogether, during and outside election periods. But if they must remain as a visible campaign tool, then the solution is simple: cut installation costs.

How? Hang them yourself.

I hung countless banners back in my university days. Anyone can do it if they learn how to tie the knots properly. (The Reform Party even has YouTube training videos that teach these techniques.)

If hanging them high up seems dangerous, hang them lower on street trees, or rent a small truck and stand on it. For reference, the Reform Party has even purchased its own crane truck and makes it available to local party chairs and prospective candidates.

By cutting booklet production costs (which are not legally mandatory anyway) and banner installation costs, a large portion of what politicians call “half of campaign expenses” simply disappears.

What remains is labor costs.

Many people wonder why elections need labor costs at all. But those people handing out name cards and waving placards on the streets during campaign season are all paid staff.

Some innocently say, “Why not just use volunteers?” But the legal restrictions on volunteers are so strict—one wrong bowl of soup could violate election law—that unless you are prepared to lose your eligibility to run for office for five to ten years, hiring paid staff is the safer option.

There are legal limits here as well. Each administrative district allows two to three campaign workers. That means six to ten paid campaign staff per candidate in a local council race.

If each is paid 150,000 won per day, daily labor costs alone reach 900,000 to 1.5 million won. Over a typical two-week campaign period, labor costs total 15 to 20 million won.

But local council elections are meant to select community servants, not to create mass spectacles. You do not need that many campaign workers. A one-person campaign is sufficient. At most, you need a campaign manager and an accounting officer.

Yet candidates hire paid staff simply because “everyone else does.”

To sum up: cut publicity costs, cut labor costs, and run a campaign where the candidate actually walks the streets. Do that, and even a 90,000-won campaign—not just a 990,000-won one—becomes possible. This is not a dream; it is a factual calculation.

Lee Jun-seok’s experiment

A few months ago, 이준석 called me to his parliamentary office. As always, it looked less like a lawmaker’s office and more like a development lab. Preparations were underway.

He had covered a chalkboard with diagrams and was explaining flowcharts—algorithmic maps used in programming—to his staff. Numerous programs were being built under his direction.

This was the birth of what might be called the “Reform Party election automation system.”

The idea was to automate party nominations and reduce nomination costs to zero; to create software for editing campaign materials and banners so that editing costs would also be zero (printing costs aside); and even to centralize printing with the lowest-cost providers to create an election that is, quite literally, “extremely cheap.”

Candidates constantly call the election commission to ask, “Is this legal?” To address this, Lee’s team was developing an AI-based election law auto-response system, along with AI tools to generate campaign strategies, tailored pledges, slogans, and messages.

Watching this unfold, I thought:This could truly enable a low-cost political revolution suited to the AI era.

My overall impression, having observed the process, is simple:
Lee Jun-seok is obsessed with efficiency, cost reduction, and system innovation.

Despite advice like, “A 2-million-won campaign is unrealistic,” or “Surely it will cost at least 5 million won,” he insisted on the “990,000-won campaign.”

Even when others argued, “Our party finances aren’t great—let’s at least charge a 100,000-won nomination fee,” Lee insisted on zero nomination fees.

At that point, everyone simply gave up arguing.

The deeper problem

Another major expense is campaign office rent and exterior banner installations.

I genuinely do not understand why local council candidates need campaign offices at all. Theirhomeshould be their office—that is precisely what local councilors are elected to be.

Yet every election season, candidates rent prime corner locations and cover entire buildings with massive exterior banners. Monthly rent alone runs around 1 million won—and in prime locations, 4 to 5 million won. Over three to four months, that means anywhere from 5 million to 20 million won spent.

Exterior banners are no better. Production costs range from hundreds of thousands to over a million won, and installation costs—dangerous, building-wide installations—can reach several million won more.

Claims that all of this was done “within the legal spending limit” are often close to fiction. Many candidates exceed legal limits through various tricks.

The normalization of illegality has long been the hidden reality of Korean politics, and recouping those costs through unethical means has become a Yeouido tradition.

The system is rotten at its roots. Someone has to change it.

I have met many capable, decent people who, when encouraged to enter politics, modestly decline, saying, “Who am I to do that?” I urge those people the most.

Others decline by saying, “I don’t have the money.” Knowing the reality, that breaks my heart.

I once had a junior colleague I deeply respected—younger than me, highly capable, with strong political judgment. When he left politics, he said, with tears in his eyes, “Hyung, I’ll go make some money and come back.”

I still remember that day. I went home drunk and cried uncontrollably, holding my wife. I felt grateful to her, sorry to her, and utterly lost.

I want politics to belong not to the wealthy, but to the capable.

And that “capability” should not mean the ability to make money, to line up behind power, to stab others in the back, to lie, or to trample over people on the way up.

It should not mean being slick, embezzling public funds, taking bribes, abusing staff, or polishing one’s image.

In all those senses, I sincerely hope the Reform Party’s “990,000-won campaign” experiment succeeds.

Not as our victory—but as everyone’s victory.

#LowCostPolitics #CleanElections #PoliticalReform