Tradition of corruption

By Kim Ji-myung

"They say the gods themselves / Are moved by gifts, and gold does more with men than words." Euripides, Medea (431 BCE), translated by Rex Warner.

The key words here are bribery and corruption. Please note that this statement was made some 2,450 years ago.

Among the many concurrent corruption scandals, the Nexon-prosecutors connection story is the hottest and ugliest.

Three men of a similar age, all with competent school backgrounds and in influential positions, have been presenting the nation with stories of a highly structured dark world involving complicated plots.

The techniques employed and the legal clauses for evasion are too complicated for me to understand. I wonder what good there is in the press reporting such details?

I am sorry that many Koreans, young and old, can now easily imagine what filthy tasks prosecutors and presidential secretaries can do sitting behind the desks in their offices. Even if they represent just 0.0001 percent of all public officials, they have already served a deadly blow to the trust and honor of the entire system.

For those who know nothing about this latest scandal, let me quote from a few articles.

I cannot properly summarize because I don't understand the big picture.

One of the main players is Nexon founder and holding company NXC Chairman Kim Jung-ju, who is a game developer. He allegedly bribed the second player, senior prosecutor Jin Kyung-joon, by offering the game company's stocks and other favors. Jin has amassed some 12 billion won through stock transactions. Kim and Jin are alumni of the same college and their families are close.

A third and equally important player in this drama is Woo Byung-woo, senior presidential secretary for civil affairs. Woo is now considered responsible for allowing Jin to pass the strict screening to reach his position, with his suspicious sudden increase of wealth.

Again, Nexon CEO Kim Jung-ju, Jin and Woo are alumni of Seoul National University.

Jin is the first senior prosecutor in the 68-year history of the nation's current prosecution system to be put behind bars while in office.

Three thoughts occupy my mind regarding this case. Firstly, as I quoted at the beginning, corruption is part of the history human nature in. Maybe that's why we need moral education, religious leaders, Confucius and Mencius.

Secondly, Korea has become much cleaner compared to how it was in the past. As we have so many cancer patients after adopting a compulsory medical check-up system, bribery, kickback and other practices of corruption surface en masse because of the reporting and screening systems currently in place.

Third, Jin Kyung-jun and Woo Byung-woo will hopefully go down in history as catalysts for another stage of clean officialdom. On July 28, the Constitutional Court upheld the anti-graft law, commonly known as the Kim Young-ran Law, which took the proposer's name. I am sure the scandal has reassured people of the urgent need for the anti-corruption law.

In relation to the issue of corruption, let me introduce Korea's classic Admonitions on Governing the People: Manual for all Administrators, authored by famed NeoConfucian scholar Chong Yagyong (penname Dasan 1762-1836).

This Mongmin-simseo written in 1821 has 72 sections in 12 chapters. The English version in 1170 pages was published by Berkeley: University of California Press, in 2010 after ten years of ardent translation work by Prof. Choi Byong-hyon.

I would strongly recommend it to readers. It can be downloaded at https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed July 28, 2016) by Project Muse.

Readers will be surprised to see how consistent public officials have been in the techniques they have used in being corruption throughout the centuries.

"If the private secretary hired by the magistrate does an outstanding job of discovering the deceptions and irregularities of yamen clerks and government slaves, the complaints eventually return to the magistrate himself. If he decides to go easy on his findings and conceals the corruption, it is also the magistrate himself who has to suffer the consequences," said Chong in a chapter on Rejecting Personal Requests or Favors.

In a chapter on Serving the Law, he gives instructions which deserve careful review even today.

"If he finds that a mistake was made by his predecessor, he should find a way to correct it by sending him a letter. If his predecessor makes little effort to redress the problem, he should report it to higher authority; he should not allow it to remain as it is."

"When the law is executed too strictly, it can inadvertently cause inconvenience. The magistrate should sometimes be allowed to be flexible to a certain extent for the sake of the people."

"Flexibility in the execution of the law can be justified to an extent if what the magistrate has done was for the interests and welfare of the people and the magistrate himself"

A general call for overhauling the Korean ruling system, the book also makes the radical proposition that the purpose of government is to serve the interests of the people.

It puzzles me how Chong knew in such detail all sorts of skills employed to commit big and small irregularities. He had all the answers and the means to correct them.

What matters is not always the laws and regulations but their implementation.

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.