Quick Take:
- South Korea’s ruling party plans to fundraise using non-fungible tokens in the upcoming general election.
- Lee Jae-Myung, the ruling Democratic Party’s candidate in the 2022 presidential election will give NFTs to those who donate to his campaign.
- However, there are concerns that such a fundraising campaign might violate the Political Funds Act or the Public Official Election Act.
South Korea’s ruling party’s presidential candidate for the 2022 election could become the first major political figure to fundraise using non-fungible tokens (NFTs). According to an article published by Korea Times, the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-Myung will give NFTs to those who donate to his presidential bid.
However, some factions are not sitting well with the idea, and have concerns that it may violate the Political Funds Act or the Public Official Election Act. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) emphasized that the National Election Commission (NEC) confirmed last month that fundraising using NFTs does not violate any of the two Acts.
In addition, Lee will not actually be selling NFTs to his supporters, but rather issuing them with some kind of an autograph of his picture and a list of his policies, turned into a unique file, the same concept used to turn art into non-fungible tokens.
The ruling party is stamping up Lee’s campaign by wooing young voters, with NFTs seen as a useful avenue amid growing global interest.
The Asian economy is notably resistant to embracing digital assets. Lee’s NFT-driven campaign is seen as an effort to support digital assets while advocating for NFT’s in gaming. Lee’s campaign team wants to identify with the unique fundraising drive, calling it “the first use of NFTs for a national presidential campaigns finance in the world.”
Former Minister of SMEs and Startups Park Young-sun, responsible for the digitalization policies at the DPK’s election campaign committee, revealed that she turned her Facebook post from 2018 (opposing the shutdown of cryptocurrency exchanges) into an NFT. Writing on Facebook on Sunday, Park added that the NFT later sold for $2,500.
Although this is the first direct link between a presidential campaign and NFTs, it is not the first incident that a popular political figure has leveraged the power of non-fungible tokens to raise money. Former US First Lady, Melania Trump recently dropped her first NFT, with the auction opening for previews on Jan. 4, before going live next week.
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