By Jay Kim
I read a newspaper article that claimed the character of a nation is determined by that nation’s societal system. For example, it is due to its societal system that U.S. citizens live in an organized manner with a high level of satisfaction in spite of the U.S.’s land mass, where it takes a six hour flight from Seattle (in the northwest) to reach Miami (in the southeast). It has a population of nearly 300 million with numerous ethnicities and religions.
America’s societal system is why thousands of people immigrate to the U.S. from all over the world every day, leaving their native countries behind. When I was the mayor of Diamond Bar, Calif., Koreans flocked to my city after hearing that a Korean-American was mayor there. One day, a high school principal met with me to discreetly discuss a pressing issue.
He told me that there were a few Korean students at his school who drove expensive sports cars, lived in luxurious apartments, and held parties with loud music almost every night. These students’ rich parents would send a great deal of money to their relatives or acquaintances that lived nearby to look after those students; however, these people were often very busy and would just leave them alone. The principal had no choice but to come to me, a fellow Korean.
If the music from a house is too loud, their neighbor calls the police, who immediately come to order the volume lowered. If this happens again, the offenders are arrested and are only released if their bail is paid. However, if this happens a third time, the situation becomes very serious. The offenders are put in prison, because of California’s “Three Strikes” law, with no room for forgiveness or exception. In fact, it is not just students but also their parents that face many difficulties when they first move to the U.S.
However, whenever immigrants are asked which part of the U.S. they like the most, without hesitation, they pick the education system first. The Diamond Bar High School was known for its good academics in LA County, and Korean parents had a high tendency to move to areas with good schools. The second reason why Korean immigrants come is the so-called “American Dream.”
The U.S. is often called the land of opportunity, since ordinary people have opportunities to succeed with their hard work here. It was only because American society provides plenty of such opportunities that Bill Gates was able to become the richest man in the world after he started his business in his garage.
Some Korean immigrants told me that people could not succeed in their own native land without connections with higher-ups in political power or without extreme wealth. Though it is hard to take these words at face value, I was surprised when I learned that the owner of a big corporation manipulated its stock prices for his son to inherit it cheaply, and made his son a millionaire overnight. If you have a rich father, you can be rich in no time. This was in contrast to Bill Gates, who donated his whole fortune to charity without leaving it for his children, since he was certain that his children would succeed by starting from scratch due to their father’s legacy.
It is also a pity to see the high-profile politicians that were summoned by prosecutors in Korea. Two former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo went to prison. In the cases of other former Presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, their sons spent time in prison. Even in the case of President Roh Moo-hyun, who was known as a person of integrity, his older brother is in prison and his son, nephew and wife were summoned by prosecutors.
I have never heard of a case where a former president or his children went to prison for corruption in the 250 years of American history. Is there any way to get rid of such corruption as the manipulation of stock prices or bribery in Korea? Among U.S. politicians, for example, Congressmen James Traficant (Democrat) and Randall Harold Cunningham (Republican) went to prison for taking bribes. Each of them was once a star of his party, but sentenced to eight years in prison.
In the U.S., the higher a person’s position is in society, the more severe punishment the person receives, because they are meant to be role models. Furthermore, if the person is found guilty, he loses the eligibility of any kind of public electoral position. He is branded as a criminal, and his family will also suffer. The severe punishments against corrupt officials and politicians are not so different from those against child-sex offenders.
Sexual offenders against children have to move out of shame even after finishing the sentence, because of the posters in their neighborhood that brand them as child-sex offenders. However, their crimes usually tend to be known in the areas to which they move, and they end up having to move to rural areas where they won’t be recognized and live out their lives in shame.
The common element in the corruption cases in the U.S. and in Korea is that the accused deny the fact that they received bribes until the end. They say in the U.S., “Deny, deny, deny!” Even presented with the evidence by prosecutors, they will deny any knowledge of the crime in question. One thing to be careful of is lying. Perjury will turn a five to 10 year sentence for contempt of court.
Without a heartless judicial system, it would have been difficult to govern the U.S. The judicial system does not leave any room for anyone, no matter what the person’s status might be, to commit crimes without having to pay the price. Of course, it is not appropriate for a society of a single ethnicity, such as Korea.
However, even Americans were surprised at the news that one million Koreans were pardoned by the president’s special amnesty. When I saw that people in high places were pardoned for their contribution to society, I thought about the practice of amnesty in the U.S., where a president pardoning just seven people drew severe criticism.
Recently, I saw a case where good-behaving prisoners were pardoned due to the lack of the prison space, even in some areas of the U.S. However, I think that the Korean system of amnesty is the wrong system, when I see criminals who held high offices waiting for the usual presidential amnesties on national holidays.
Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the Washington Korean-American Forum. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).