15,793 Voter Names Handwritten: Jeong Yi-han’s Innovative Campaign Approach Explained

Reform New Party mayoral candidate Jeong I-han in Busan has launched a so-called “sincere” initiative by personally hand-writing voters’ names on preliminary campaign materials.

Jeong’s campaign announced on the 12th that it will begin sending 157,939 copies of the materials in phases starting on the 14th.

The mailing includes Jeong’s key pledges and a handwritten letter from the candidate. His team deliberately chose to write each recipient’s name by hand to distinguish these materials from standard campaign literature.

The campaign says the gesture signals a commitment to treating voters as individuals, not merely as votes, and that, despite the physical limits, Jeong took up a pen because he wanted to address as many people by name as possible.

Jeong’s campaign tactics also break with conventional political playbooks. Instead of staging events along major downtown boulevards, his team set up an office in neighborhoods dense with young people near cram schools and has prioritized direct conversations with residents.

Moving beyond formal, greeting-focused rallies, the campaign asks citizens about Busan’s pressing issues and conducts on-the-spot interviews. Those scenes have spread online, earning reactions that they are “engaging” and “refreshing.”

Jeong said he will not forget the resolve he reaffirmed while writing voters’ names and pledged to turn on-the-ground feedback into policies that will transform Busan.