Reform Party floor leader accuses election watchdog, rival parties of 'junket cartel' funded by taxpayers

Reform Party floor leader Cheon Ha-ram on Wednesday urged the National Election Commission and the two major parties — the Democratic Party of Korea and the People Power Party — to immediately halt spending on overseas training programs and return all funds already disbursed, accusing them of using taxpayer money to build a "junket cartel."

In a Facebook post that day, Cheon said he was exposing "the ugly truth of how the National Election Commission — which is supposed to transparently oversee the country's elections and party subsidies — and the political parties themselves have used taxpayer money to cement a 'junket cartel.'"

He described a joint program between the NEC and the two parties called the "Foreign Party and Political System Training," saying it spends between 170 million and 180 million won ($116,000) in public funds each year to take roughly 10 party officials from the Democratic Party, the People Power Party, the Basic Income Party and others — selected in proportion to their seat counts — on nine-night, 10-day luxury package tours to destinations including Europe and Australia.

"Our party's name does not appear on this shameful list of squandered taxpayer money," Cheon said, adding that the program had run for more than a decade before the Ministry of Economy and Finance cut its entire budget in 2024 as part of spending-reduction guidelines. The program ground to a halt through 2024, 2025 and the first half of this year, he said.

He then alleged that as soon as the administration changed, the NEC moved to revive the budget — which he called "tainted" — citing complaints from party officials. The government's budget ministry sent the bill to the National Assembly with the item fully cut, he said, but during the Assembly's review process a Democratic Party lawmaker from the greater Seoul area demanded a 159 million won increase, and ultimately 80 million won in training funds was restored.

Cheon criticized the move as an abuse of the Assembly's budget review authority. "The Democratic Party used its review power to self-approve a budget increase so it could send its own people on overseas trips — a budget the government had already cut to protect taxpayers," he said. "The NEC, acting as referee, granted party officials' requests for overseas training, and the parties, acting as players, returned the favor by protecting the referee's budget in the Assembly. This is a textbook 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' junket cartel."

Cheon also took aim at the training reports produced by participants, saying they were filled with basic geographic and cultural overviews of visited countries — material copied from online encyclopedias — with no substantive analysis of foreign party systems. "They submitted patchwork reports that wouldn't pass muster as an elementary school assignment, while burning through nearly 6 million won per person on lavish overseas trips," he said.

He further alleged that NEC staff made up 30 percent of each delegation under the pretext of guiding party officials, effectively joining the trips as tourists. Employees from the NEC's central planning and public affairs divisions, as well as general affairs and public relations staff from regional election commissions, were rotated in and out of the trips despite having no connection to party operations, he claimed.

Cheon urged the NEC to immediately stop spending the 80 million won budgeted for this year's program and return the full amount. "The NEC revived this budget to curry favor with party officials using taxpayer money and reward its own staff with cushy overseas trips," he said, also demanding that the plans and reports from all training trips taken over the past decade be made fully public.