[Inside Chodong] The "Flower of Democracy" Stained by Waste

A total of 400 million copies. This is not about bestsellers. It is the number of election brochures delivered to every household during the 20th presidential election held two months ago. The National Election Commission produced and distributed a total of 400 million copies, including 290 million booklet-type brochures, 108.5 million leaflet-type brochures, and 970,000 braille-type brochures for each candidate. This is an enormous amount comparable to the sales volume of the world’s best-selling novel series, the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, unlike Harry Potter, not many people carefully examine the contents. Many people throw them away without even opening the envelope. Even those who look at them soon toss them into the trash.

That’s not all. If you gather and spread out the posters of the 14 candidates that were posted all over the country, their length reaches 848 km. This figure is based on the posters being produced at 10 m wide (0.8 m tall) and posted in 84,884 locations nationwide. This is enough to cover the road between Seoul and Busan round trip and still have some left over. Including the banners put up by each political party, the amount of election promotional materials increases exponentially. After the election, all of these become trash destined for incineration. This is why environmental groups point out elections as a “blind spot for waste policies.”

Most promotional materials used briefly during elections are discarded as waste. Besides being difficult to dispose of, the production and incineration processes emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. Especially banners release harmful substances such as dioxins, making incineration difficult. Since they are mainly made of plastic synthetic fibers, they hardly decompose even when buried. The costs are also considerable. The National Election Commission spent 266.2 billion won on producing posters and brochures and managing voting and counting during the last presidential election. This amount excludes the political party election subsidies (46.5 billion won) and candidate reimbursement costs (108.3 billion won). All of this is funded by taxpayers’ money.

Although there are growing calls to amend related laws to reduce waste and greenhouse gases, the laws seem to be moving in the opposite direction. In 2005, the regulation on the size of banners attached to candidates’ election offices was removed from the relevant law, allowing sizes to grow large enough to cover high-rise buildings. In 2010, the limit of up to four banners per election office was completely eliminated. In 2018, the rule allowing only one banner per eup, myeon, and dong in an electoral district was doubled. This explains why the number of banners hanging in neighborhoods increases with each election.

The local elections will be held in three weeks. The local elections have a much more diverse range of positions to be elected compared to the presidential election. These include superintendents of education, heads of metropolitan and basic local governments, district metropolitan and basic council members, and proportional representation metropolitan and basic council members, among others, too many to count on one hand. The amount of promotional materials will increase accordingly, and an enormous amount of election waste will sweep through the streets once again. Posters and banners are means of election promotion used back in the 1960s and 1970s when promotional methods were limited. Considering that their promotional effect is minimal and that they cause environmental pollution and costs during recycling, it seems appropriate to phase them out. It is necessary to minimize or ban the use of banners through legislation and to produce posters and brochures on recycled paper or convert them to online brochures. This is so that elections, funded by taxpayers’ money, can transform from “waste elections” into “eco-friendly elections.” How about creating a cleansing opportunity through elections, the “flower of democracy,” to sweep away not only “waste politicians” but also outdated posters and banners?

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.