By Lee Young-wha
``It is worth going to the United States for your children's education. The education fees are heavy in Korea, parents have to give teachers a lot of money and there are extra private tutoring costs, etc, etc, etc.'' When I talked to the mother of one of my students, a Korean-English bilingual who started attending middle school in the States last year, she expressed the difficulty of educating her children in Korea. I was not surprised by the high cost of the private education, but the bribe matter was shocking.
My unpleasant astonishment led me to continue to ask her, ``Do bribes still exist a lot in our motherland?'' I was aware this happened a long time ago when I attended elementary and secondary school and saw my teachers receive money there.
She said, ``It's huge. The amount varies but can go up to $2000 a year. There are also several ways of delivering the money to teachers. Sometimes parents collect the money together or each individual parent slips the money to the teacher.''
It seems that the problem of bribery is deeply rooted in Korean society. Because giving bribes comes from our cultural background, this practice spreads throughout our society, including politics, business and education. It is all the more ironic bribery originated in our beautiful culture of giving gifts.
According to an educational report, ``The analysis of educational bribery and development of bribery culture in education,'' we usually give gifts to others as a ``a small token of gratitude'' or ``a small gift'' owing to our cultural background of Confucianism. Confucian society focused on ethics and morality, emphasizing emotion and compassion rather than rationality and reason. The gift represents the sentiment called ``jeong,'' which means gratitude, friendship, or respect for the recipient. However, the true meaning of the gift has faded away and has become tainted. Our precious cultural practice changed with the passage of time. It has become more dysfunctional, losing its positive influence.
This cultural background is one of the reasons why the bribe problem is quite serious in Korea compared to other countries. In the United States, for example, the matter of bribery is not as serious a social problem compared with other educational and ethical problems, including sexual harassment, buying alcohol and drugs, or crimes involving the theft.
Jean Luckowski, who teaches ethics and policy issues at the University of Montana, explained that bribery-related ``morally prohibited actions'' are uncommon in the United States. Parents sometimes give teachers gift certificates or other presents, but not money itself. However, even this is rare.
A few weeks ago, Korea's education authorities announced they would disclose the names of teachers who have behaved unethically. The first part of the teachers' misconduct dealt with the acceptance of bribes. However the authorities changed their minds at the last moment because of teacher's demonstrations. This careless change and the lukewarm attitude of the authorities toward teachers' dishonesty about bribery reflect how very little our society considers this matter to be critical. The educational authorities and policy makers should strengthen punishment against teachers who receive money from parents and should take legal action against them.
The reason why the problem of bribes should be strictly dealt with is because there are a number of bad side effects when parents give bribes to teachers. The children whose parents give the teachers the inappropriate money can be treated more preferably compared to other students whose parents are not ``concerned'' about the teachers' private lives.
We should not misuse our cultural heritage and exploit gifts for personal gain. However, I don't think bribery will be completely gotten rid of since this is based on our culture, which has held up our society for a long time. Moreover, giving presents to teachers as a sign of gratitude can be a courtesy. Therefore, I suggest that we should have a standard for gifts. The sign of thanks for teachers should not be cash, but a gift worth less than $30. In addition, we should apply the strict rules and punishment of giving bribes to private schools, not only to public schools. Most significantly, we need to change the social atmosphere where our distorted culture approves of giving bribes. We should foster the public agreement that we have no choice but to follow fairness and honesty.
The writer studied in the United States, majoring in different customs and cultures of Korea and America. She can be reached at lovelyywl@gmail.com.