[Bon-Young Koo Column] Grassroots democracy is rotting

The June 3 local elections are now four months away. Both the ruling and opposition camps urgently need to regroup. The Democratic Party of Korea is in turmoil over whether to merge with the Rebuilding Korea Party. The broader opposition camp is also unsettled, with signs of candidate overcrowding in the People Power Party (PPP) after the expulsion of former leader Han Dong-hoon and the ensuing internal strife. In the midst of this, Democratic Party lawmakers Kang Sun-woo and Kim Byung-kee recently left the party over allegations of accepting nomination bribes for a Seoul city council seat. It is a political scene that brings to mind the saying about being so engrossed in one’s own games that one fails to notice the axe handle rotting away.
Has a Pandora’s box been opened, exposing the bare face of the local autonomy system? Democratic Party of Korea member and Seoul city councilor Kim Kyung resigned a short while ago. It came 28 days after a recording was released in which he said he had given 100 million won to Kang Sun-woo in exchange for a nomination in the 2022 local elections. Kim Byung-kee, who took part in the recorded conversation with Kang, has also come under fire. A petition has resurfaced alleging that, ahead of the 2020 general election, he received 30 million won from district councilors in his Dongjak District constituency and later returned the money.
Is this kind of misconduct in local election nominations just the tip of the iceberg? Playing a leading role in this bizarre spectacle, Kim Kyung reportedly told police, "I am upset because I was not the only one who did this." If his claim is true, the rumored price list for nomination bribes may not be entirely groundless. For years, people have whispered that "district council seats cost tens of millions of won, city council seats 100 million won, and district mayors, city mayors, and county heads several hundred million won, regardless of party." Recently, most of the scandals that have surfaced involve figures from the current ruling camp. But that does not mean the opposition is any more virtuous. As one commentator put it, the opposition may simply have fewer MPs and no real power, and therefore fewer opportunities to engage in nomination corruption.
Even so, Democratic Party of Korea leader Jung Chung-rae described the "nomination bribe" allegations as "closer to a human error than a system error." He insists that the suspected exchange of money is merely an individual deviation. Yet this strongly suggests an attempt to cut off the tail at the level of Kang Sun-woo and Kim Byung-kee. It looks like a move to prevent the scandal from expanding into a broader indictment of the party’s entire nomination system for general and local elections. The party’s outright refusal to accept a special counsel investigation into nomination bribes, as demanded by the opposition, fits the same pattern.
To make matters worse, investigators have found a recording of phone calls between Kim Kyung and people linked to a sitting ruling-party MP, made ahead of the Seoul Gangseo-gu mayoral by-election in October 2023. Police discovered more than 120 such audio files on a computer voluntarily submitted by the Seoul Metropolitan Council. At this point, it is hard even to guess how far the fallout may spread. The recordings reportedly contain discussions on how to deliver nomination bribes to powerful figures in the ruling camp.
At this stage, it is fair to say that the local autonomy system is degenerating into a stage for Kleptocracy, no less than national politics. If what is called grassroots democracy is rotting from the roots, the situation is grave. The local autonomy system was restored in 1995. It was justified as a break from elitism, in which a small vested class ruled over the many, and as a system where ordinary citizens would participate and care for their local communities.
In reality, however, local autonomy has increasingly become a hotbed of corruption through collusion with central politics. Local council members have paid bribes to secure party nominations and then tried to recoup more than their money’s worth by meddling in various business interests once in office. The Seoul Metropolitan Government has now launched an audit after finding that, each time Kim Kyung moved to a different Standing Committee of the Seoul Metropolitan Council, a company run by his family appeared to win contracts from affiliated agencies. This is just one example.
Both ruling and opposition parties have already begun competing to secure as many local government heads and local council seats as possible. Yet this is nothing more than a league of their own, detached from the national interest and public welfare. Under these circumstances, the most urgent task before the June 3 elections is to break the vicious cycle that has been repeated and accumulated over the past 30 years.
In that context, we must first face why the local election arena has turned into an oversupplied market. When the system was launched, local council members were unpaid honorary positions, receiving only meeting allowances. Because the role was seen as public service, outside jobs were allowed. Today, however, council members can still have other jobs except in certain prohibited professions, and they receive generous activity and monthly allowances—over 70 million won a year for a metropolitan council member. On top of that, the mechanisms to prevent them from meddling in business interests are weak. No wonder candidates swarm to the sweet nectar of office like aphids to a flower stalk. That is why it may be worth considering returning basic-level council seats to unpaid honorary positions, as is the case for local council members in some states in the United States of America (U.S.).
An even greater challenge is to stop the murky upper stream of central politics from contaminating the lower stream of local politics. In other words, Members of Parliament (MPs) must stop taking nomination bribes from local council members and treating them as their foot soldiers in every election. Abolishing the party nomination system for metropolitan councilors may be the best solution. If that is not feasible, at the very least the involvement of MPs in nominating candidates for local elections must be minimized. As a second-best option, each party could adopt a preliminary primary system when selecting its local election candidates.
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