By Kang Hyun-kyung
The government has declared a war on corruption involving government officials and employees of state-run firms.
The drive to fight corruption by President Lee Myung-bak’s administration is not new.
Lee’s predecessors had struggled to deal with a vicious cycle of high-profile corruption and falling approval ratings, when they were in their fourth year in office.
“We have seen plenty of high-profile corruption cases that had made headlines from the time when presidents enter into their fourth year in office. The single-term presidency is largely responsible for the surge of bribery cases involving presidential aides or relatives in the latter part of the presidency,” said a senior fellow of a state-run think tank.
Asking for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, he said, there are people who try to take advantage of their personal ties with politicians or those in top posts and engage in corrupt practices to reap personal gains while in office.
The expert called these people “spoilers.”
“The high-profile bribery scandals involving a president’s confidants or aides directly affect a sitting president’s approval ratings. It’s a vicious cycle,” he said.
When the single-term presidency is drawing to a close, political leaders tend to lose control gradually over the nation.
It’s at these times that some government officials make efforts to build or strengthen networks with strong presidential candidates for promotion in the next government.
Meanwhile, high-ranking officials who have discretion over major decisions inside a ministry or those who are in a position to exert influence over major deals are approached by people lobbying for their interests.
Yoon Hee-woong, a senior research fellow at the Korea Society Opinion Institute, a polling agency, said the Lee government is not the only one that launched a massive campaign to fight corruption in officialdom.
“Former presidents stepped up efforts to tackle bribery and unethical cases revealing that government officials violated ethics codes or were involved in bribery cases when they were in their offices four years or longer,” he said.
Yoon remained skeptical about the prospects for success of such efforts.
“When it comes to effectiveness in curbing falling approval ratings, I think their endeavors were not successful. Launching an anti-corruption campaign was not linked to rising approval ratings.”
Earlier, the Prime Minister’s Office unveiled a comprehensive plan to fight against unethical, corrupt practices in the public sector.
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) has also launched investigations of its own.
The BAI also made public several unethical and bribery cases involving government officials and employees of state-run firms.
But in a bold critique that should have stung the most, President Lee stated that “the entire nation was rotten to the core” at a gathering of Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers held a few weeks ago.