South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party of Korea or DPK is on its way to creating history by becoming the world’s first political party to issue non-fungible tokens [NFTs] for fundraising in a presidential election, according to presidential candidate Lee Jae-Myung’s campaign committee on 2nd January 2022. As per official sources, starting from this month, the DPK will sell the digital images featuring Lee’s photos and policies to his supporters and raise donations to fund his election campaign.
The election committee’s latest fundraising plan comes close on the heels of DPK lawmaker Lee Kwang-Jae’s announcement on 30th December last year that he would accept cryptocurrency donations in mid-January and issue receipts for donations in the form of NFTs. In the press conference, the lawmaker also revealed the presidential candidate’s preparation for fundraising through the issue of digital tokens.
Emphasizing that the National Election Commission [NEC] gave a green signal last month that raising funds using NFTs does not violate the Political Funds Act or the Public Official Election Act. Apart from that, former minister of SMEs and Startups Park Young-sun, who is in charge of digitalization policies at the DPK’s election campaign committee, also boosted the party’s digital asset-friendly policies by issuing an NFT tagging her Facebook message written in 2018, in which she opposed the shutdown of cryptocurrency exchanges.
South Korea’s efforts to woo voters through NFTs
In an effort to win the hearts of young voters, the DPK’s presidential candidate has backed up the gaming industry’s attempts to use NFTs. During an interview with a YouTuber last month, he said that South Korea should lead the global trend of integrating games with digital assets and NFTs.
“If we deny what actually exists, it will be similar to an isolationist foreign policy,” he said.
Previously in December 2021, South Korea’s finance ministry announced its decision to delay taxation plans in the profits incurred through cryptocurrency for some time. In accordance with an amendment approved by its National Assembly’s finance committee, the crypto tax law, which was slated to be effective from 1st January 2022, has been postponed for a year.
