By Oh Young-jin
Managing Editor
When Kim Jeong-hoon, a Korean-American businessman, withdrew as nominee to lead the newly-created Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning in March, a lot of Koreans felt sad for a missed opportunity for the nation as well as for Kim.
After all, the former president of Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and Corporate Strategy and an entrepreneur who overcame humble beginnings as the son of immigrants and made a fortune, not only personified the "Korean-American dream" of the 1960s and 1970s but made for an exciting human interest drama.
That is why, when one reads his op-ed piece, entitled "A return to South Korea, thwarted by nationalism," on the website of The Washington Post, one feels as a fellow Korean the imperative to try and help him dispel the misunderstandings he obviously has about the circumstances that led to his departure.
First, Kim blames the nationalistic media for questioning his motive and slandering his family.
That is only partially true.
He is only one of six "casualties" who have withdrawn as nominees or senior officials under the month-old Park Geun-hye government.
The other five are Han Min-soo, nominee to head the powerful Fair Trade Commission (FTC); Hwang Chul-joo, nominee for the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA); Kim Yong-joon for prime minister; Kim Byung-kwan for defense minister and Kim Hak-eui as vice justice minister.
All five are Korean and the reasons for their withdrawals vary. FTC nominee Han stepped down over allegations he maintained offshore accounts to dodge taxes; Hwang withdrew for allegedly violating stock possession rules for senior officials; PM nominee Kim for having his two sons exempted from mandatory military service; Defense Minister nominee Kim for his alleged connection with an arms broker and the vice justice minister for his unproven participation in sex orgies.
In other words, the vetting process Kim Jeong-hoon faced was not much different than that of other senior government officials.
The media, whether it is mainstream or startup Internet portals, played its given role as what British Prime Minister Tony Blair infamously called a "feral beast" in checking nominees' qualifications.
Thus, he has his own faint-heartedness to blame, if that is a little bluntly realistic. Or he may have expected special treatment.
Of course, that is not equal to saying the current media-led vetting process is perfect. As a matter of fact, it appears to be excessive from time to time, discouraging the best and brightest from applying for senior posts. But there is no denying it imbues a sense of noblesse oblige on those aspiring to lead the nation.
We Koreans are as nationalistic as any other homogenous nation but Kim should understand that his withdrawal had little to do with that because we took him as one of our own. Our treatment of U.S. LPGA golfers of Korean descent shows how open we are about such matters.
He was indeed naïve as he said in his column, if he took it as just another plum job in the private sector as he is accustomed to taking. What he was offered was a public job whose main purpose was not to profiteer but to promote the national cause in a broader sense.
Now appears to be an appropriate time to share a sense of resentment concealed at the time of his abrupt departure.
Some felt sorry for the president because the ministry Kim was supposed to take over was the thrust of her governance aimed at diversifying the main players of the nation's economy that, as he correctly pointed out in his column, relies on a few large conglomerates to an unhealthy degree.
By the time Park found another nominee, a state-run research-oriented KAIST professor, there appears to be no denying that the president had lost a great deal of momentum for her economic reform agenda.
"If Kim had persevered just a bit longer, he could have been accepted and made contributions to his mother country as he had wished," some would say, thinking with a sense of irony that Kim, who made it in his adopted country, failed in the country where he was born.
He was right in his writing when he said Korea should be more accommodating to people coming from outside, considering the world is turning into one big community where the meaning of borders is less important.
He was also right about the need to spur small and medium businesses to create more jobs and stabilize the overall economy.
Still, he can't rationalize his being unaccepted by his country of birth on the grounds of nationalism.
If we can learn a bigger lesson from a wrong example than from a good example, the Kim example shows that ethnic Koreans who want to make contributions to their motherland should take that very seriously, making sure they are ready to go all the way before making their bid. If not, don't.
But rest assured that we don't keep them away for nationalistic zeal, not just because we consider them our own, but also because we have passed that point.
Managing Editor
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After all, the former president of Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and Corporate Strategy and an entrepreneur who overcame humble beginnings as the son of immigrants and made a fortune, not only personified the "Korean-American dream" of the 1960s and 1970s but made for an exciting human interest drama.
That is why, when one reads his op-ed piece, entitled "A return to South Korea, thwarted by nationalism," on the website of The Washington Post, one feels as a fellow Korean the imperative to try and help him dispel the misunderstandings he obviously has about the circumstances that led to his departure.
First, Kim blames the nationalistic media for questioning his motive and slandering his family.
That is only partially true.
He is only one of six "casualties" who have withdrawn as nominees or senior officials under the month-old Park Geun-hye government.
The other five are Han Min-soo, nominee to head the powerful Fair Trade Commission (FTC); Hwang Chul-joo, nominee for the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA); Kim Yong-joon for prime minister; Kim Byung-kwan for defense minister and Kim Hak-eui as vice justice minister.
All five are Korean and the reasons for their withdrawals vary. FTC nominee Han stepped down over allegations he maintained offshore accounts to dodge taxes; Hwang withdrew for allegedly violating stock possession rules for senior officials; PM nominee Kim for having his two sons exempted from mandatory military service; Defense Minister nominee Kim for his alleged connection with an arms broker and the vice justice minister for his unproven participation in sex orgies.
In other words, the vetting process Kim Jeong-hoon faced was not much different than that of other senior government officials.
The media, whether it is mainstream or startup Internet portals, played its given role as what British Prime Minister Tony Blair infamously called a "feral beast" in checking nominees' qualifications.
Thus, he has his own faint-heartedness to blame, if that is a little bluntly realistic. Or he may have expected special treatment.
Of course, that is not equal to saying the current media-led vetting process is perfect. As a matter of fact, it appears to be excessive from time to time, discouraging the best and brightest from applying for senior posts. But there is no denying it imbues a sense of noblesse oblige on those aspiring to lead the nation.
We Koreans are as nationalistic as any other homogenous nation but Kim should understand that his withdrawal had little to do with that because we took him as one of our own. Our treatment of U.S. LPGA golfers of Korean descent shows how open we are about such matters.
He was indeed naïve as he said in his column, if he took it as just another plum job in the private sector as he is accustomed to taking. What he was offered was a public job whose main purpose was not to profiteer but to promote the national cause in a broader sense.
Now appears to be an appropriate time to share a sense of resentment concealed at the time of his abrupt departure.
Some felt sorry for the president because the ministry Kim was supposed to take over was the thrust of her governance aimed at diversifying the main players of the nation's economy that, as he correctly pointed out in his column, relies on a few large conglomerates to an unhealthy degree.
By the time Park found another nominee, a state-run research-oriented KAIST professor, there appears to be no denying that the president had lost a great deal of momentum for her economic reform agenda.
"If Kim had persevered just a bit longer, he could have been accepted and made contributions to his mother country as he had wished," some would say, thinking with a sense of irony that Kim, who made it in his adopted country, failed in the country where he was born.
He was right in his writing when he said Korea should be more accommodating to people coming from outside, considering the world is turning into one big community where the meaning of borders is less important.
He was also right about the need to spur small and medium businesses to create more jobs and stabilize the overall economy.
Still, he can't rationalize his being unaccepted by his country of birth on the grounds of nationalism.
If we can learn a bigger lesson from a wrong example than from a good example, the Kim example shows that ethnic Koreans who want to make contributions to their motherland should take that very seriously, making sure they are ready to go all the way before making their bid. If not, don't.
But rest assured that we don't keep them away for nationalistic zeal, not just because we consider them our own, but also because we have passed that point.
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