Corruption as Power Abuse

By Michael Breen

When the chief taxman is accused of taking billions of won in bribes from companies eager for favorable tax assessment, you would assume that a lot of honest taxpayers would be very angry.

But when prosecutors revealed last week they were investigating the former commissioner of the National Tax Service, Lee Ju-sung, for having allegedly raised around 5 billion won in side cash during his term, the beast of public sentiment, exhausted from its most recent exertions over Dokdo and U.S. beef, did not even open one eye.

That is because there was no surprise.

The very sad fact about this society is that people expect those with power to abuse it, and those with the opportunity to steal to take it.

There is a particular pattern to this type of corruption, which may explain why it never seems to end. It is that those committing such crime are not the criminally-minded, who crop up randomly in all sorts of professions and positions. Rather, it seems to be a natural form of power abuse.

Consider almost any sphere of society and you risk finding wrongdoing among those in charge. This seems to be true in the obvious areas where the political elite operate, like the National Assembly for example, as well as in the areas where there is lots of money, as we have seen recently with the trials of the chairmen of the Samsung Group and Hyundai Motor.

It may come as a shocking statistic, but nearly half the 16 former tax chiefs have been involved in corruption scandals. This pattern of abuse has flowed down through the system and I am sure that every Korean reader over 30 will have their own story of having to deal with it.

The pattern of abuse at the top exists more subtly in less obvious place. Take the roads, for example. This week, I was driving merrily in Gangnam when my son phoned. As I took the call, I drove round a corner and was caught red-handed by a policeman who issued me with a 60,000-won fine for using my cell phone while driving.

It's human nature to wriggle out of offenses and my first fleeting thought was to protest. (The second was to get my son to pay the fine because it was he who had called me). But, after a few seconds, when I had regained moral equilibrium, I had to admit there was no injustice. The policeman was right and was doing his job. I could only be angry with myself.

Except for one thing. Who are the biggest offenders on the roads? Yes, bus and taxi drivers. Have you ever seen a policeman stop a bus or a taxi? No. Why? Because they are recognized as the professional elite of the road and are free to abuse their power. I used to assume without really thinking about it that bus and taxi companies bribed the police. But this is almost certainly an unfair accusation. The likely truth is that those who make their living on the road, and therefore serve the national interest, unlike your owner-driver who selfishly prefers to cause traffic jams rather than take the subway, are viewed more preferentially. The fact that off the road, they are not high on the social ladder is irrelevant. On the road, we owner-drivers are the peasants.

If this pattern offers an explanation of what appears to be a tiresome and never-ending cycle of corruption, that saps the energy of the populace and so distracts the beast of public sentiment that it goes off yapping at its own shadow like a cocker spaniel, it also offers a solution.

That is that the government needs to focus on how to put in place systems to control those in power. If you can feel confident that the bank teller is not going to empty out your bank account because her honesty has been reinforced by internal controls, so you should be able to feel confident that CEOs are not going to swindle shareholders, and that bus drivers are not going to illegally run red lights when your children are crossing the street.

Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants in Seoul. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.