Corruption in the name of custom

By Choi Sung-jin

I started my career back in 1981 covering a major government office for an English paper.

A month after I began working, the lady at the pressroom gave me an envelope with 50,000 won ($45) ― which could easily be the equivalent of 150,000 to 200,000 won today, considering inflation.

“What is this?” I asked her. “That’s traffic expense,” she said. At first I could not see exactly why the agency’s press office should help finance my carfare. Back at the paper’s newsroom, I asked my seniors about it. They told me it was a “customary practice.”

When I moved to the business desk years later, one of the editors who had been a reporter at a vernacular daily told me, “You’ll receive ‘chonji’ (money as a token of gratitude) as much as your salary on your new news beat.” It was an exaggeration but not absolute baloney. Chonji from economic beats was certainly larger than that from political ones.

Of course, Korea was under the rule of general-turned-presidents who used both carrots and sticks to silence critical journalists. As the nation was democratized and society became more transparent, cash envelopes began to disappear toward the late’ 80s. Yet free gifts and golf outings remained as well as wining and dining hosted by bureaucrats and executives and junkets sponsored by businesses.

I am telling these shameful stories preparing to be hit with stones because I had been one of the undoubting beneficiaries of the bad old system, thinking ― or justifying ― all these were “customary practices.” When everyone is doing it, the pang of conscience becomes duller. Until one day in the early ’90s when I saw a reporter from a progressive daily give his envelope back to the press officers, saying it was his paper’s policy not to accept money from a news source. Not everyone was that scrupulous.

Many reporters, myself included, thought ― or tried hard to think ― that receiving favors from certain people or organizations and criticizing them are two separate things. And acknowledged later it was easier said than done. Others said bribes for journalists were just a fraction of those given to politicians and bureaucrats. But businesspeople do not give bribes from their own pockets but from those of others by either overcharging consumers or monopolizing businesses. Those left holding the bag at the end are always powerless ordinary people.

Last Thursday, the Constitutional Court upheld the strictest anti-graft law the nation has ever seen, which regards journalists and teachers as public servants to be subject to the law. One of the organizations taking issue with the law’s constitutionality is the Journalists Association of Korea, a group of more than 10,000 reporters working at newspapers, broadcasters and wire services.

As soon as the ruling came, the association issued a critical statement, saying the law would seriously erode press freedom by forcing journalists to make ceaseless self-censorship and present themselves at the offices of law enforcement authorities more frequently than they are at news scenes.

I can understand the association’s anger with the law’s targeting of reporters while excluding financial executives, legal professionals and even lawmakers who appear far more prone to corruption than journalists. But expanding the scope of applicable jobs should be handled separately.

The association should welcome the ruling ― which calls for, among other things, limiting the price of a free meal to 30,000 won and the worth of a gift to 50,000 won -- as an occasion to free journalists from suspicions of bribery and allow them to engage in news gathering more freely. Instead, the fraternity group’s statement gave readers and audiences the impression that it regrets the forced breakaway from long familiar favors and benefits.

To be sure, Korean journalists might as well feel frustrated with the ever shrinking press freedom in this country, whose place in the Freedom House rankings plunged from 35th in 2007 to 70th last year. But what they should feel angry about is not reporters’ inclusion in the category of public workers but the increasingly arrogant attitudes of bureaucrats and businesspeople in dealing with reporters.

For instance, I personally can seldom understand why journalists, and their association and media companies, are not taking issue with Cheong Wa Dae’s growing reluctance to let presidents face the people through its correspondents. During the past eight-and-a-half years of conservative governance, the presidential news conferences ― perfectly prearranged at that ― became biennial or triennial events.

Customs and practices that only the insiders of a group or community can justify turn into irregularities for outsiders. Prosecutors-turned-lawyers can think it a usual practice they make enormous amounts of money with the help of former colleagues. Financial policymakers may believe it customary for their post-retirement landing at banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses as executives, lobbyists in other names. All these are irregularities for outsiders.

Likewise, many things regarded as time-honored practices in Korea ― like countless pots of orchids at the offices of newly promoted public officials and news editors and numerous celebrators and mourners for the influential people’s family events ― are examples of irregularities, if not downright corruption, in the eyes of foreigners.

And this shows why Korea’s corruption perception index by Transparency International is near the bottom among 37 OECD nations. Corruption may appear to be the lubricating oil for a society in the short run but is one of the biggest drags to sustainable growth in the long run.

I hope the law’s implementation ― with no revision or relaxation ― will be an occasion to review many customs and practices in this country, and the media industry.

Choi Sung-jin is The Korea Times’ senior writer. Contact him at choisj@ktimes.com.