Published : Aug. 7, 2013 - 20:25
This year’s jangma is finally over after a record two-month stretch. While the rain front moved up and down the peninsula from mid-June, the nation had too much disturbing news that further annoyed people who were under nature’s merciless attack with floods, landslides, unbearable heat and humidity.
Most saddening was the sacrifice of six workers ― three from China ― in the flooding of a piped water facility
construction site in Seoul. Then we lost five high-school boys at a poorly supervised seaside boot camp. There even was a “suicide performance” by the leader of a financially troubled activist group that resulted in his death in the swollen Hangang River. Also suicidal was the attempt to scale the Japan Alps by old Korean climbers; four died under the rocky peaks.
Side by side with stories of water disasters which mostly victimized farmers and residents of low-lying urban areas, media outlets reported prosecutors’ raids on offices and homes of notable figures almost on a daily basis in their probes into corruption involving high-ranking officials and big businesses. It looked as if our society’s superstructure was mired in corruption while its substructure was struggling for survival under extreme natural adversities.
Followed by hordes of TV cameramen, investigators seized documents, artifacts and valuables from the private spaces of former president Chun Doo-hwan, his children and other relatives. Watching their determined actions to collect the yet-unpaid fines the court had imposed on Chun for corruption during the 1980s, people wondered why the law enforcement authorities and lawmakers had been so soft and lazy in this affair for so long.
Throughout this rainy summer, the issue of the Northern Limit Line, the maritime demarcation between the two Koreas in the West Sea, dominated Korea’s partisan politics. It was not about how the nation could best use its military assets to defend the seaward border and ensure peace in the sensitive waters; they wrangled over whether former president Roh Moo-hyun had in fact hinted at a concession of the NLL during his 2007 talks with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang.
If there was one positive outcome from the persistent row, it was the confirmation that both ruling and opposition parties at present are not ready to change the status quo with the NLL under any circumstances. Then came the great embarrassment to all, the rival parties, the Blue House and concerned citizens: the “non-existence” of the original minutes of the Roh-Kim dialogue in the National Archives. Now we have realized that crucial state assets can disappear when the administration changes.
Bureaucratic continuity, consistency and ultimately independence are the essence of democratic government, but these values are easily forgotten by political appointees to agencies like the National Intelligence Service. Won Sei-hoon, NIS chief during the Lee Myung-bak administration, was arrested on bribery charges last month, soon after the authorities started an investigation initially into his possible interference in last year’s presidential election.
Present NIS head Nam Jae-joon, a retired four-star Army general, went out of bounds when he decided to declassify the Roh-Kim dialogue minutes and delivered copies to the members of a National Assembly committee, effectively aiding the group that accused the deceased former president of being a “sellout” of the NLL. As the civilian pillar of national security, the NIS neglected the key principle of political neutrality. It may be more accurate to say that it has not yet graduated from the modus operandi of the past era.
Disappointment with yet another major government organization surged when a former chief of the National Tax Service was arrested for the second time on bribery charges. While investigating business improprieties of the CJ Group, a leading food and entertainment business, prosecutors were told that the conglomerate head presented the top taxman with a watch worth 30 million won and $300,000 in cash in July 2006 as a congratulatory gift for his promotion.
In that year, CJ Group was spared from huge taxes due for stock transfers between its subsidiaries. We can only imagine that some form of intimacy might have been maintained between the business group and high offices in the NTS while CJ continued remarkable business expansion in the following years. Chairman Lee Jay-hyun was arrested last month on charges of evading taxes and diverting corporate funds.
When we look into the history of our tax administration, it is dismaying to note that out of a dozen NTS chiefs since the 1990s, all but three were criminally charged while in office or afterwards. No statistics are available on criminal records of the republic’s tax service personnel but the high frequency of bribery in the top places ― with one name even making two entries ― is too deplorable. Naturally, we wonder if CJ was exceptionally friendly to taxmen among big corporations.
The wet summer of 2013 is particularly sweltering because the authorities set office temperatures at 26 degrees Celsius nationwide to keep power consumption within the production capacity which has gone down significantly due to the stoppage of some nuclear reactors. Extensive repairs were needed as it was revealed that defective parts were purchased and used for many components of the power generation systems. An elaborate chain of bribery has been in existence between suppliers and the atomic power company hierarchy.
Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. must be only one of the many bad cases among the nation’s public enterprises, and CJ group may be the frontrunner in the corporate race for growth and profit. By taking the sternest possible legal and social sanctions on wrongdoers and disadvantaging the erring side in whatever transactions, the nation should demonstrate that it has a system that does not bow to evil ideas and deeds.
During the jangma period, we glumly observed the “owners” of three leading conglomerates (including those of SK and Hanwha) in jail charged with business improprieties, a former tax office chief and a former state intelligence agency head going behind bars accused of bribery, and a disgraced former president battling with prosecutors to keep his unsavory family assets. When the dry season sets in with cooler air, will newspapers’ front pages be any different from the dreadful past months? I hope that something better will come along so I don’t lose my confidence in this country and its system.
By Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald. ― Ed.