W3.2b raised for Lee Jae-myung's presidential campaign in just one day

Liberal presidential frontrunner Rep. Lee Jae-myung's representatives announced Wednesday that fundraising for his presidential campaign had concluded in just a single day, with nearly 3.2 billion won ($2.24 million) raised.

His team said that the amount raised surpassed the 2.94 billion won maximum that a candidate may raise, according to the Political Funds Act. The excess will thus be returned to those who donated after the limit was reached.

The act stipulates that funds raised by a candidate should not exceed 5 percent of the total campaign expenses set by election authorities. The upper limit of expenses for the June 3 presidential election has been set by the National Election Commission to be 58.85 billion won.

In South Korea, the Public Official Election Act limits the total amount spent on a presidential election to ensure there is equal opportunity for all candidates to run for election.

Article 121 restricts all presidential election expenses to a calculation based on multiplying the total population by 950 won. Then, taking into account the national consumer price index, the election expense limit calculation ratio -- 13.9 percent for this election -- is applied, with the total allowances and industrial accident insurance premiums for candidate campaign managers added.

About 63,000 people participated in the fundraising after it opened to the public at 10 a.m. on Tuesday. According to Lee’s camp, 99 percent of contributors donated less than 100,000 won.

The flood of small contributions seems to reflect people's yearning for a swift return to normalcy amid political turmoil that followed former President Yoon Suk Yeol's botched martial law declaration Dec. 3, Lee's representatives said in a press release.

In the March 2022 presidential election, when Lee narrowly lost to Yoon by 0.73 percentage points, it took about two months for the association of Lee's supporters to complete fundraising in February 2022 with some 31,000 contributors.

Three years on, Lee is one of three candidates in the primary of the Democratic Party of Korea, along with Gyeonggi Province Gov. Kim Dong-yeon and former South Gyeongsang Province Gov. Kim Kyoung-soo.

Lee, the party's former leader, is considered the leading candidate and most likely to receive the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

At a ceremony to mark the start of the presidential primary race Tuesday, Lee said that whoever receives his party's nomination must win "for the future of this country."

"Those who destroyed the constitutional order and betrayed the people must never again exercise power in this country," Lee said, in an apparent reference to the conservative People Power Party, to which former President Yoon belongs.