The Qualifications of a Member
Lee Yun-hyeok had officially resigned from his post as Mayor of Mir City.
"March 5th. Wednesday."
Seol Jung-ho stared at the date on his calendar.
With the local elections scheduled for June 4th, Yun-hyeok had a mere three months left.
Within that incredibly tight window, he had to gather at least two hundred citizens to hold a promoters' convention, establish regional offices in at least five provinces or metropolitan cities, recruit at least a thousand members for each chapter, hold a national founding convention, register the political party, run internal primaries, secure his nomination as the Gyeonggi Province gubernatorial candidate, and hit the campaign trail.
"Under normal circumstances, this schedule should be absolutely impossible," said Han Myeong-cheol, who had come to discuss the emergency.
"Normally, once a preparatory committee is registered, the National Election Commission gives them six months just to recruit five thousand members. Even then, plenty of people fail to gather enough and watch their parties collapse before they even start."
It went without saying that joining a political party was entirely different from signing a petition to add more subway cars.
From Seol Jung-ho's perspective, the situation felt deeply unfair.
"How could anyone have predicted he would pull a stunt like this?"
"I admit it was unpredictable, but that doesn't absolve you of responsibility, Representative Seol." Han Myeong-cheol frowned. "Honestly, didn't this whole mess start because the Liberty Party made such a desperate, reckless push to recruit Lee Yun-hyeok in the first place?"
"..."
Seol Jung-ho remained silent. He had to concede the point.
If this had ended with a simple defeat in the gubernatorial race, Seol Jung-ho could have pinned the blame on Seo I-gyeong's faction and walked away with a net gain. But now that it had escalated into the creation of a new political party, his own responsibility had ballooned. By inadvertently giving Yun-hyeok the perfect justification to launch his own party, Seol's standing within his own party was beginning to wobble.
"We can assign blame later," Seol Jung-ho said, smoothly shifting the subject.
"Let's talk about how we're going to dismantle this thing right now."
That was what mattered.
"Representative Han, how many people can you mobilize?"
Unions, religious groups, various associations—South Korea was teeming with countless organizations, large and small, and many of them operated as de facto puppets for the major establishment parties.
"We need to flood his party with our people and tear it apart from the inside."
Because of its sheer novelty and bizarre system, Yun-hyeok's party had captured the entire nation's attention.
The moment he held his press conference, the number of prospective members likely surpassed five thousand. By now, it could be in the tens of thousands.
"But not all of them will have voting rights."
Typically, political parties divided their ranks into general members and voting members. The former was little more than a basic registration—holding party status on paper—while the latter paid monthly dues and actively participated in party decision-making.
"If we can plant our people by the tens of thousands, we can have them all register as voting members and keep Lee Yun-hyeok in check."
"We have to do it now. If we miss this window, it'll be too late."
This new party had the potential to swell to millions of members. Once it reached that scale, sabotaging it would be impossible.
"We must dismantle it at the moment of its creation."
Of course, even for the two major establishment parties, this was no easy task.
Since Yun-hyeok's party required real-name verification, the mobilized agents would feel a significant personal burden.
Furthermore, the window to prepare such an operation was incredibly tight. Time was running out not just for Lee Yun-hyeok, but for them as well.
"In the end, we'll just have to flood them with money," Han Myeong-cheol said. "There is no other way."
"We're going to burn through a fortune in part-timer fees..." Seol Jung-ho muttered.
Lee Yun-hyeok as Chairman of the Preparatory Committee.
Jeong Hyeong-seok as Chairman of the Talent Recruitment Committee.
Kim Min-cheol as Chairman of the Policy Planning Committee.
"I can understand up to that point, Mayor—no, Chairman!" Jo Hyeon-seo said.
"But is it really okay for me to take on this role...?"
Hyeon-seo stared at the name tag he had received for the promoters' convention. He looked incredibly tense.
"Systems Director!"
"The title sounds grand, but it's not actually that difficult," Yun-hyeok replied.
"Really?"
"One of our party's core identities is digital democracy. By moving away from analog methods and allowing citizens to exercise their sovereignty quickly and conveniently, we can overcome the limitations of representative democracy. Which means..."
Yun-hyeok continued.
"The security of our digital system is absolutely paramount. The online member management system, the voting member promotion system, online voting, and the national convention—all of it."
"..."
"Chairman Jeong Hyeong-seok has already contacted an IT firm, and they are currently building our online platform. It's nearly finished. Your job, Hyeon-seo..."
Yun-hyeok handed him a stack of documents from the security firm.
Identity verification protocols, mobile alerts for unrecognized logins, blockchain technology, real-time pattern-detection AI, web firewalls, session security... The pages were packed with dense, highly technical jargon.
"Your job is to coordinate with this firm and manage the launch schedule."
"But I don't know the first thing about this kind of technology..."
"This role doesn't require technical expertise. It requires trust. That is far more important."
"Trust?"
"Yes. Because," Yun-hyeok said, "there will undoubtedly be external forces trying to join our ranks solely to cause chaos."
During his five terms in the National Assembly, Yun-hyeok had fought people like Han Myeong-cheol and Seol Jung-ho to the death.
He knew exactly what they would be planning.
They were almost certainly organizing a sabotage campaign.
"Imagine what would happen if the person managing our member database took a bribe and secretly promoted those saboteurs to voting members."
"!"
Hyeon-seo gasped. It was a simple role, but it carried an immense, unexpected weight.
"I will keep my eyes wide open and watch them like a hawk!"
"But," Kim Min-cheol chimed in, "could we perhaps launch the party without voting members for the time being?"
After all, other political parties typically required three to six months of consecutive dues payments before granting voting member status.
In other words, a general member could not become a voting member immediately upon registration.
"To defend against organized attacks from saboteurs and protect our candidates' right to run, wouldn't it be safer to proceed without voting members until the local elections are over?"
"That is a sound strategy," Yun-hyeok agreed.
Indeed, doing so would completely block Han Myeong-cheol and Seol Jung-ho's schemes.
However, once the actual election campaign began, they would use that very decision as a weapon.
They'll claim that for a party supposedly centered on its members, the candidates weren't even chosen by a member vote. They'll ask if I consider myself exempt from my own party's rules.
"We cannot afford to give them that kind of ammunition. Our goal isn't just to establish a party; it's to win the local elections," Yun-hyeok said.
"And putting strategy aside, we cannot violate our own political philosophy right from the start. We cannot act contrary to the very ideology of our party."
Therefore, the ideal scenario was to launch the party, conduct a rapid internal primary via online voting to select candidates for Mir City Mayor and Gyeonggi Province Governor, and have them hit the ground running.
"That is the only way to secure the enthusiastic support and donations of our members. It will also maximize our chances of winning the actual elections."
"In that case," Jeong Hyeong-seok said, "our method for filtering out those external forces will be critical."
Hyeon-seo's job was to block saboteurs trying to sneak through the back door.
But if the saboteurs tried to upgrade to voting member status through the official, legitimate channels, the party would have no criteria to filter them out and no justification to block them.
"On that note," Yun-hyeok said, "what do you think of this approach?"
At a co-working space in Pangyo, Seongnam, a diverse group of citizens gathered—teachers, startup founders, postpartum care center directors, parents of middle and high school students, doctors, farmers, and college students—to hold the promoters' convention.
Yun-hyeok read the draft platform, Kim Min-cheol elaborated on the policy direction, and Jeong Hyeong-seok explained the rules regarding talent recruitment and leadership.
The 427 citizens in attendance voted to decide the party's name.
National Sovereignty Responsibility Party
Or the Responsibility Party for short.
The party destined to carry the final hopes of a nation hurtling off the tracks toward dystopia had officially begun its journey.
Next, they established a supporters' association to raise funds.
The annual limit for donations to a political party's supporters' association varied by scale; for a newly formed party, the cap was 3 billion won.
"Now, let's establish the regional chapters."
Time was of the essence.
They began accepting online registrations while simultaneously setting up regional chapters in major metropolitan areas.
Seoul was a legal requirement, as the national headquarters had to be located there. In addition to Seoul, they targeted Gyeonggi, Incheon, Daejeon, and Gangwon.
Yun-hyeok traveled frantically across the country, renting office spaces.
While there were no legal requirements regarding square footage, the spaces had to be functional offices.
He had to submit lease agreements, photos of the office signs, and interior photos to the National Election Commission.
At the same time, they opened the online registration portal to accept new members.
They had to gather as many donations and members as possible before the national founding convention.
The result?
"One hundred and twenty thousand!"
Han Myeong-cheol felt a wave of nausea and dizziness wash over him.
"What... Did I hear that right? One hundred and twenty thousand?"
"Yes, sir..." his chief of staff replied with a grim expression.
"To be precise, it's 121,000. And..."
The chief of staff swallowed hard.
"They've already hit the maximum 3 billion won limit for donations."
It was an unprecedented record in Korean political history.
Previously, a third-party movement had made headlines by gathering 100,000 members within a week of its launch.
But for a party to surpass 100,000 before even registering with the NEC was unheard of.
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Han Myeong-cheol's neck.
"Out of those 120,000, how many are our people?"
"Seven thousand."
"And the Liberty Party?"
"Around eight thousand."
"Sigh..."
Han Myeong-cheol let out a long, heavy sigh.
Out of those 120,000 members, how many would actually become voting members?
Typically, voting members made up only 10 to 20 percent of a party's total roster.
"A lot of people probably joined Lee Yun-hyeok's party out of sheer curiosity," the chief of staff offered, trying to inject some optimism.
"The conversion rate to voting members might be lower than we think."
"I highly doubt it..."
So many unprecedented events had occurred in rapid succession that nothing could be predicted anymore.
And the party would continue to accept new members even after the founding convention.
"What time is the convention?" Han Myeong-cheol asked.
"Two o'clock."
Once the founding convention was over, the party would begin processing the voting member upgrades.
Lee Yun-hyeok had declared he would run for Gyeonggi Province Governor under the banner of the National Sovereignty Responsibility Party.
To do so, he had to go through an internal primary.
If he bypassed it, he would face immediate backlash for using elitist privileges to trample over his own party's democratic principles.
And that primary was something they could disrupt.
"We can have all fifteen thousand of our people upgraded to voting members."
Normally, the criteria for becoming a voting member boiled down to money and time—specifically, paying dues for a set number of months. But the agents deployed by the Hanmin Party and the Liberty Party had joined during the preparatory committee phase, meaning they met any duration requirements. The funds for their dues had also been fully prepared.
"They will announce the specific upgrade criteria at the convention."
Han Myeong-cheol and his staff waited in a state of high tension.
At 2:00 PM, the national founding convention commenced.
- ...The party we build today will place the voters, the members, and the citizens back at the very center of politics.
Lee Yun-hyeok began his speech.
- We have established real-name, online public voting as our party's core principle.
The party's mottoes were transparency, member-centric governance, and civic participation.
Systematically, they had introduced the innovation of digital democracy.
- As for the dues requirement to become a voting member...
Finally, the topic came up.
- There is none.
"What...?"
"The Responsibility Party will not sell voting rights for money."
It was common for parties to strategically adjust their dues requirements during election seasons—either lowering them to boost membership or raising them to block organized infiltration.
Han Myeong-cheol and Seol Jung-ho had expected Yun-hyeok to choose the latter option to block external forces and keep the primary limited to die-hard, genuine supporters.
But Yun-hyeok had gone in the exact opposite direction. And that wasn't all.
"These are the requirements to become a voting member of the Responsibility Party."
While it cost nothing financially, the new conditions imposed a massive psychological cost.
Publicly declaring one's political affiliation on their personal social media.
"Some of you may find this final condition quite daunting," Yun-hyeok said.
"However, the Responsibility Party is a newly born movement, and at this stage, we are highly vulnerable to external attacks. Therefore, our party's early decision-making will be guided by genuine members who possess a deep sense of responsibility and courage."
No paid saboteur would be willing to expose their private life and political stance on their personal social media for a measly 100,000 won part-time fee.
In fact, even having their real names displayed on the party's internal servers after verification was already a significant deterrent. But to force them to link and post on their personal social media accounts?
That was something money couldn't buy. It required genuine conviction.
In a society where discussing politics openly was often treated as a taboo, doing so publicly was no easy feat.
Yet, surprisingly, South Korea was full of citizens who were ready to do just that.
People who deeply worried about the national crisis. People who cared about society beyond their individual lives.
People who had no qualms about discussing politics at work or among friends, and who freely posted their political thoughts and comments on social media.
There were far more of them than one might think.
And for them, the ideology of Yun-hyeok's new party was incredibly enticing. A vast majority of the 120,000 founding members belonged to this very group.