Political Money Trails Lead to Home

According to analysts, 49% of assemblymen who call Jeonnam home received large amounts of funds from conglomerates from the same province. On the other hand, Gwangju showed the least connection with regionalism, with only 7.6% of assemblymen receiving political funds.

A total of 51.8% of Jeonnam-born conglomerates also transferred grants to politicians from the same region, showing the highest connection with regionalism.

The relationship between business location and local electorates was relatively higher for special cities and metropolitan cities than it was for provinces. Politicians belonging to Seoul received 76.8% of their donations from businesses in the same area.

For universities, Seoul National University topped them all. Politicians who graduated from SNU received 27.1% of their donations from conglomerates headed by SMU graduates, and 52.2% of SMU graduates gave funds to same-school politicians.

SNU also ranked first by accounting for 22% of the largest funds in total. Korea University came in second with 12.6%, Yonsei in third with 9.6%. and Jeonnam National University was the sole regional university to rank within the 10 top fund-providers, with graduates giving out 6.1% of all funds donated.

Meanwhile, the amount raised by assemblymen in the same period of time was 16.75 billion won for 6,624 reports, and donations over 10 million won accounted for 2.34 billion won, 13.9% of the total sum. A total of 26.5% of this amount, 618.7 million won, was transferred from those from the same hometown.