Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
Unbearable Banality of Park's Evil
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By Jason Lim
When Sewol sank in April 2014, it became apparent that the cozy relationships among the regulatory agencies, industry watchdogs, and safety inspection organizations all led to cursory safety checks that allowed for the design change and even gave Sewol good safety marks in February. Supposedly, it took an average of only 13 minutes for each ship when a four-person inspection team checked the condition of 36 ferries last year.
At the time, President Park referred to the “deep-rooted evils” that allows senior regulatory officials to take post-retirement jobs at industry bodies that they had previously overseen, breeding a good ole’ boys’ club of incestuous and mutual backscratching.
How ironic in light of recent happenings in Korea. It turns out that Park herself was running the familiar racket in which the political and business elites use their inherited power, wealth, and connections to stack the deck against the little guys.However, what really made Park stand out and so outraged the Korean public was that the apparent objectives and players involved in this scandal were soordinary as to be banal.
This whole scandal is looking more and more like the President using the full power and authority of an advanced sovereign nation to do favors for a close family friend (albeit with a colorful family history that goes way back) and cater to her own sense of vanity. I mean, the President personally lobbied the head of Hyundai Auto on behalf of a subcontracting companyowned by the father of a close elementary school friend of Choi Sin-sil’snow-twenty year old daughter.This personal appeal led to Hyundai Auto letting a supplier contract worth the grand total of $1 Million. The president of the 11th largest economy in the world with GDP of $1.4 Trillion spent political capital and staked her “face” for $1M for a friend of a friend of a friend.
Also, it’s becoming pretty apparent that one of Park’s primary interests was to maintain her youthful appearance and vigor. Why else would the Blue House need all those doses of “placenta” shots and other esoteric rejuvenation concoctions? It’s never pretty and most often cringing when you see an aging man or woman turn to extreme means to maintain an artificially youthful appearance. It’s probably criminal and certainly unethical when you use Presidential privilege and tax payer’s money to do the same.
There wasn’t some grand “Illuminati-like” scheme to roll back democracy, institute a Park monarchy, and somehow rule from beyond the grave through a secret society bound to her by blood oath. Nor was there some plan to create a “Jason Bourne-like” super surveillance state in Korea by secretly trampling over people’s right to privacy and tracking every single move of all individuals in Korea. There wasn’t even Lee Myung-bak’s not-so-secret but always-vociferously-denied plot to eventually transform his four-rivers dredging project into his legacy for a cross-country grand water roadway.
As many have already pointed out, what Park did was not outside the recent norms in South Korea’s political history. All presidents have had their fair share of corruption scandals, many involving members of their immediate families. Which begs the question: what is it about Korea that permits such banality of evil at the highest levels ofour governance?
Perhaps the answer lies in the words of a middle school student who spoke out during a recent anti-government demonstration in South Kyungsang Province:
“I don’t like it when people say it’s more important to get President Park to resign as if that would solve all problems. Is she singularly responsible for all the problems in my life? Is Choi Sin-sil singularly responsible? No, the people who are responsible are those whom I run into every day’ these include my parents, class representative, friends, teachers, and company managers who act like Park and Choi although they were not told or forced to act like them… I wish that ordinary people would be outraged to discover Park and Choi within themselves…”
Professor Barbara Kellerman, who pioneered this concept of followership, argues, “in order to understand the leadership dynamic, we must take into account not only those who exercise power, authority, and influence, but also those on whom power, authority, and influence are exercised. But I am making another claim as well: that instructing on becoming a good follower is as important to the common good as instructing on becoming a good leader. In fact, this course on Followership makes the argument that to teach the one without the other is not logical.”
In Park’s case, have we practiced good followership? Have wedone enough to really force our leaders to become good leaders and engage in a process of truth, justice, and transparency? Have we fulfilled our role as followers with a sense of civic duty, instead of only engaging in name calling and emotional orgies of blaming?
Good followership is as essential to maintaining the common good as good leadership. In fact, leadership is a reflection of followership. If we insist on being Park and Choi in our everyday lives, then who’s really to blame for Park and Choi?
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.