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By Donald Kirk
Show trials of foreign leaders make the indictment of Donald Trump for paying off a porn actress to silence her look like an episode that should flicker, flare and fade.
In Asia, former leaders have gone to jail with a regularity that proves the enduring truth of the Shakespearean line, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." They may not have been monarchs, but they all wore figurative crowns of thorns.
In South Korea, the long-ruling dictator, Park Chung-hee, was assassinated in 1979 by his intelligence chief. A general, Chun Doo-hwan, soon seized power, leading to protests across the country and revolt in May 1980 in Gwangju in which more than 200 demonstrators were killed.
One of Asia's great show trials was that of Chun and General Roh Tae-woo, elected president as Chun's successor in 1987 after Chun promised to step down amid some of the biggest protests in Korean history. Roh served a five-year term, but he and Chun were arrested and convicted in 1996 for corruption and the Gwangju Massacre.
Sentenced to death and life in prison, respectively, Chun and Roh were amnestied and freed in early 1998 in order to give an impression of national unity at the inauguration of Kim Dae-jung, elected president in 1997 ― many years after Chun had jailed him for allegedly instigating the 1980 revolt.
Kim, promising reconciliation with the North, flew to Pyongyang in June 2000 for the first North-South Korea summit, but the euphoria surrounding his talks with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il and his Nobel Peace Prize faded into how he made it happen. Later it was revealed he had authorized the illicit payment of at least $500 million to Kim's regime, which went on developing nuclear warheads before the North's first nuclear test in 2006.
Subsequent Korean presidents were also involved in scandals. Kim's successor, Roh Moo-hyun, having completed his five-year term in 2008, committed suicide in 2009 after his wife was caught up in a bribery investigation.
The next two presidents, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, daughter of Park Chung-hee, also were jailed in corruption cases. Lee, former chairman of Hyundai Construction, served as president from 2008 to 2013. Convicted of bribery and embezzlement nine years later and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, he was released by President Yoon Suk Yeol.
Park endured worse. Accused of corruption and abuse of power, she was the target in 2016 and 2017 of daily mass demonstrations in Korea's Candlelight Revolution. Jailed, impeached and ousted in 2017, she too was sentenced to more than 20 years but freed in 2021 by her successor, Moon Jae-in, elected after helping to bring about her downfall.
Corruption has also marked the fairly recent history of Asia's great giants, China and India.
After China's Great Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the "gang of four," including Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, controlled the levers of power. Overthrown and tried after Mao's death in 1976, they were imprisoned for life. The hanging of "Madame Mao" in prison in 1991 was said to have been by suicide.
In India, Rahul Gandhi, great-grandson of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was just kicked out of the parliament after his conviction for libel. His offense: defaming the prime minister, Narendra Modi, whom he accused of dispensing favors.
Gandhi may still aspire to power while fighting a two-year jail sentence. He's the son and grandson of two former prime ministers. His father, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in 1991, and his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, was assassinated in 1984. Indira, convicted of election fraud in 1975, clung to power ― and later declared an "emergency" leading to the arrest of opposition politicians.
Nor has Japan, a land of law and order, been immune from corruption scandals. Kakuei Tanaka, "the computerized bulldozer," prime minister in the early 1970s, was arrested in 1976 for having accepted nearly $2 million in bribes from Lockheed to get All Nippon Airways to purchase its planes. Sentenced to four years, he was still free on appeal when he died in 1993.
But not all Asian leaders are corrupt. Lee Kuan Yew, who died in 2015, rose to power as prime minister of Singapore in 1959, six years before it broke away from Malaysia as an independent country. Lee remained prime minister until 1990. Four years later his son, Lee Hsieng Loong, took over and holds the post to this day.
The Lee dynasty has effectively crushed political opposition. Singapore prides itself as "clean and green," free of pollution and corruption.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes from Washington as well as Seoul.
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