Nine conglomerate caterers feeding Korea's military gave a farm fund 9.5 million won in eight years

Seoul Economic Daily put CJ Freshway's giving at less than 0.00003% of the 3.5 trillion won in revenue the company booked last year ^[1]. Divide the full eight-year total of 9.5 million won ^[4] by one year's revenue and you get about 0.00027% ^[15]. The paper's figure is closer to the yearly average: roughly 1.2 million won a year, or about 0.000034% of revenue ^[18][16].

All nine caterers together supplied about 0.003% of the roughly 330 billion won the fund had collected by September ^[19]. Over the eight years the paper counts, the fund has taken in about 41 billion won a year. The plan was 100 billion ^[20][5].

Suh Sam-suk, the Democratic Party lawmaker who chairs the National Assembly's agriculture and fisheries committee, got the figures from the farm ministry ^[3]. "Large companies taking part in military food service, which is run with taxpayers' money, should not weigh only price and profit but also consider their social responsibility to support our farmers and fishermen," Suh said ^[12]. "The fact that most of these companies have not donated a single won to the Agriculture and Fisheries Mutual Growth Cooperation Fund shows they are turning away from social responsibility and cooperation," he said ^[13].

For Samsung Welstory, Hyundai Greenfood and the six other non-donors ^[2], we see three plausible outcomes. The first is that the complaint goes no further than the data release. The report does not describe a bill, and it does not say how much revenue any of the nine gets from military contracts. The second is that each of the eight matches CJ Freshway's entire record, which cost less than 10 million won ^[4]. The third is that the selection rules start counting donation records, as Suh proposes ^[14]. We think matching is the most likely because it is the cheapest. The case for doing nothing is that the fund stops collecting within a year ^[6]. We would be wrong about the cost if a rule set the expected donation as a share of revenue. At 0.1%, CJ Freshway's would be 3.5 billion won a year ^[17].

The ingredient findings are of two kinds. The guidelines issued in January last year recommend that outsourced caterers use domestic produce first ^[7], so Australian beef in gomtang goes against a recommendation. The navy case is a charge of false labeling ^[10]. That caterer has kept supplying the military since it was caught ^[11]. The paper reported growing calls to check the origin of food actually delivered and to follow up on companies found in violation ^[23].