[Noh Dong-il Column] “Nomination Donations”? They Are Bribes

"The Public Crime Investigation Unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, which is investigating allegations of so-called nomination donations, has requested arrest warrants from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office for lawmaker Kang Sun-woo and former Seoul city council member Kim Kyung on charges of violating the Political Funds Act, accepting and giving benefits in breach of trust, and violating the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act." This is part of a news article from the 5th. The two are under investigation on suspicion of giving and receiving 100 million won in connection with a request for a party nomination in the 2022 local elections. Some media outlets have focused their criticism on the fact that investigators applied breach of trust charges, not bribery charges, to the two. Police reportedly concluded that a party’s nomination decision is hard to regard as an "official duty" of a lawmaker, which is required to constitute the crime of bribery, and therefore applied the charges of accepting and giving benefits in breach of trust. The police say they will decide whether to add bribery charges after further investigation.
Even if the specific statutes and sentencing ranges differ, giving or receiving money in exchange for a party nomination is a criminal act that is severely punished as bribery, breach of trust, and violations of the Political Funds Act and the Public Official Election Act. The practice of calling this “nomination donations” is itself problematic.
In dictionaries, a donation is defined as the act of offering money to God, or the money thus offered. The terms and nuances differ by religion, but the core meaning is similar: acknowledging divine sovereignty, dedicating oneself, loving the community and one’s neighbors, and participating in worship. Religious donations are sacred offerings to God. By contrast, money exchanged in the nomination process is an illegal transaction for private gain. Calling it “nomination donations” is therefore inappropriate.
Courts have repeatedly stressed that giving or receiving money in return for a nomination must be punished strictly. Such practices gravely undermine the fairness of public elections, which are the foundation of democracy, and form a structural vice that fuels political corruption. Labeling this kind of serious crime as “nomination donations” risks diluting the gravity of the offense. Given the media’s influence and its role in shaping public understanding, it would be more accurate to use the broader term “nomination bribes.”
Simply changing the term from “donations” to “bribes” only serves to highlight the seriousness of the crime; it does not offer a fundamental solution to nomination corruption. Severe punishment alone cannot completely shut off such offenses. With the registration of preliminary candidates for the 2026 local elections effectively marking the start of the race, black money is likely still changing hands somewhere. No doubt accompanied by excuses like the one reportedly made by former council member Kim Kyung: "Everyone else is doing it."
There are many structural reasons why money keeps circulating in party nomination processes. Major parties monopolize nomination rights and keep local politics subordinate to central party politics. Incumbent local lawmakers wield enormous influence over nominations, and closed-door, backroom nomination systems are entrenched. Although I have used local elections as an example, the situation is much the same in National Assembly elections. Large parties monopolize nomination power, central party leaders exert heavy influence over who gets nominated, and the nomination system lacks transparency. Political circles here have announced various nomination reform plans in the past.
A representative example is the nomination reform package agreed in 2015 by then Saenuri Party leader Kim Moo-sung and then New Politics Alliance for Democracy leader Moon Jae-in. The two effectively agreed to introduce bottom-up nominations that would exclude handpicked candidates favored by those in power and return nomination rights to the people.
The reform plan included introducing bottom-up nominations through a citizen nomination system, adopting a safe-number system to protect personal information, and granting additional points to newcomers, women, and young candidates. However, it ultimately collapsed. The mainstream factions in both parties opposed a full citizen primary system that would eliminate strategic nominations by party leaders. Critics also attacked the safe-number system as a waste of tax money and raised concerns about the possibility of strategic voting by rival supporters. If you look closely at these stated objections, they were essentially resistance by vested-interest politicians trying to preserve their own political influence.
In the United States, where open primaries and other preliminary elections are now firmly established, the path to reform was also far from easy. Until the early 20th century, party nominations were typically decided through backroom deals among party bosses. The phrase "smoke-filled room" became commonplace to describe these smoke-filled backrooms. General elections were often a mere formality, while corruption was rampant in the nomination process, where money and favors were traded.
Some scholars even argued that "a party’s nomination power is the enemy of democracy." Yet, as a result of the Progressive Movement around the 1920s, various forms of preliminary elections took root across the states—open primaries, caucuses, and others—in which citizens or party members directly choose their candidates.
A bottom-up nomination system is not a magic cure-all. But we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the current structure of corruption. Numerous nomination reform ideas and related bills are already on the table. All that remains is to choose and implement them. The root of the problem lies in the political establishment’s resistance to giving up its vested interests. If we can rally public anger over nomination corruption, the barrier is not insurmountable. It is time to recognize these payments as nomination bribes, not nomination donations, and to move beyond harsh punishment toward structural reform. The criticism that "a party’s nomination power is the enemy of democracy" applies to us as well.
dinoh7869@fnnews.com Reporter