Help your daughter &#8212; ethically

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Michael Breen

Help your daughter — ethically

Posted : 2010-09-09 18:28

Updated : 2010-09-09 18:28

By Michael Breen

The resignation of the foreign minister this week over accusations of nepotism prompts a question: how could he be so stupid?

Of course, every father wants to help his daughter. It's natural. But why would the country's top diplomat undermine his own position, and jeopardize G20 summit preparations, by breaking his own ministry's guidelines to do so? Because everyone is at it?

It seems that way. We're asking this question just days after the National Assembly's exposure of the alleged moral failings of several would-be Cabinet appointees, including the president's choice for prime minister. The timing suggests that Korea is suffering a leadership crisis.

These top people are, of course, not stupid. And it is silly to suggest that they are all ethically flawed, as government’s opponents claim. At the same time, it is a mistake to see them as victims of bad PR and the vicious whims of public sentiment, as government supporters might feel.

What's happening, and what so many fail to see, is that the game of public service is changing. In practice it may appear that critics are jumping on technical violations and whipping up public sentiment, which itself, unethically, will not allow the defendant to even make his case.

But behind this process is a desire for higher standards. Once upon a time, public servants, who were the most highly educated members of society, were gatekeepers. They stood in the way of citizens who wanted licenses to do business, permission to build buildings and so on. To make it worse, their abuse of power was sanctified by the vagueness of the legal system that required these same bureaucrats to interpret as they saw fit.

While echoes of those days remain, today public servants are expected to be just that ― servants of the public. Just because they passed difficult exams and got appointed to important jobs, bureaucrats do not own their ministries. We do. Their salaries are paid by taxpayers and we expect them to abide by our rules.

The type of charges being leveled at leaders of nepotism, plagiarism, and rule-breaking to get around restrictions on property-ownership and so on all revolve around a matter of fair play. The nepotist cheats on behalf of his children. The plagiarist cheats for his own advantage. Each time this happens, the law-abiding citizens are disadvantaged.

In a different context, such violations may be acceptable strategies to deal with an unfair environment. They may even appear virtuous. The former president Kim Dae-jung, for example, changed his age on official documents during the Japanese colonial period. Although never admitted, the most likely motive was to avoid compulsory service in the Japanese army. We may consider that a virtue.

When Korea was a dictatorship, those with power arrived at it by random luck, which meant that for most, random misfortune could strike at any time. The older generation grew up so surrounded by unfairness that the academic who did not buy tenure or the army officer who did not pay for promotion were considered buffoons. I know a union leader who some years ago declined 1 billion won from the owner of the company where he worked. He still hasn't told his wife.

Shortly after I arrived in Korea in the early 1980s, I was told about a man who had been an ambassador to several countries who refused to help his relatives get good jobs. This was told to me by a critic who clearly considered the man to lack any morals and feelings for his family.

Today, however, we want a country in which equality and fairness, particularly in these highly competitive times, are practiced by all. Whatever the law says, that will only happen when those in authority abide by such rules naturally, without giving a moment's thought to violating them.

Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.