By Choi Sung-jin
According to the National Tax Service, 591,694 Korean businesses paid almost 9.97 billion won ($8.95 billion) in entertainment expenses with their corporate credit cards last year.
They spent about 1.14 trillion won, or 11.5 percent of the total, at various entertainment spots such as room salons, karaoke bars, dinner theaters, high-class Korean restaurants and nightclubs. That shows why people say the Korean-style entertainment culture sustains the nation’s sex industry.
And it also tells why many believe the new anticorruption law, which cleared the controversy over its constitutionality last week, will go nowhere unless Korea changes its notorious entertainment culture.
“In our society, too many people still try to solve problems by using personal connections made by wining and dining people with influence, including politicians, bureaucrats and journalists,” said Professor Oh Jeong-keun of Konkuk University in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.
In Korean businesses, there are managers and executives called “sulsangmu,” or drinking executives -- having lunches and dinners weekdays and playing golf over the weekends with influential people.
When they entertain government officials, for instance, there are some fixed prices depending on the guests’ grades, such as 35,000 won a person for division directors, 50,000-60,000 won for director generals and more expensive hotel meals for higher officials.
After dinner, they mostly move to quieter places, like bars and cafes, and drink whiskey or cognac, talking about light topics -- such as their golfing ability -- and fix schedules for the golfing rounds. If the guests want to have a third round of bar hopping, mostly to places with women, the businesspeople mostly follow, like it or not.
Total cost ranges between 640,000 won and 970,000 won for a group of four, but sometimes exceeds 1 million won, according to a businessman familiar with this task. Finally, the inviters catch a cab for guests and prepay the fares. The guests then usually say, “Let’s talk about business some time later.”
Since the government introduced the “clean card” -- which cannot be used at expensive spots like hostess bars -- entertainments costing several million won a night have sharply declined in number. Still, the nation’s entertainment culture costs too much to be called normal.
Behind these expensive forms of entertainment that have become part of business culture is the practice that regards them as corporate costs. In other words, money for entertainment has become easy money -- or blind money as it is called in Korea -- so those who entertain and those who are entertained tend to prefer expensive services.
It is small surprise then that businesspeople, politicians and journalists want the upper limits of the new anti-graft law -- 30,000 won for a meal and 50,000 won for a gift – raised further up.
But even the new ceilings are not that low compared with other countries.
In the United States, a gift to a public worker should not exceed $20 (22,000 won) and the yearly total of gifts is limited to $50. Violators can face up to 15 years’ jail or $250,000 in fines. In Britain, public officials have to reveal the content, price and givers when they receive gifts worth 25 pounds (37,000 won) or more. In Japan, spending on entertaining a public servant is limited to 5,000 yen (54,400 won).
In none of these industrial countries is there an entertainment culture like Korea’s.
“In Korea, social relationship is based on three ties -- family, region and school,” an executive at a small business said. “If you have no such ties, you have to make them by giving gifts to officials and wining and dining them. People tend to think they have made personal ties only when they get drunk together or share some ‘secrets’ by buying sex together.”
Some businesspeople expect the new law will help them refuse undue requests from powerful officials, not only entertainment but other favors such as free air tickets, by providing them with “legal excuses” to reject them.
Others call for eliminating the environment for irregular requests and undue entertainment by stripping officials of their authority related to administrative permission as well as ensuring fair and transparent competition.
“Without drastically reducing administrative red tape, entertainment culture will not disappear,” said Oh, the Konkuk professor. “Nor can we ensure the success of the stringent anticorruption law.”