Mired in
corruption, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea reflected on the matter on
television in July 2012. “The more I think about it, the more it crushes my
heart,” he said. “But whom can I blame now? It’s all because of my negligence .
. . . I bow before the people in apology.” He had offered a similar apology the
previous January during his New Year’s speech. Although Kim himself was not as
of July implicated, three relatives, four senior staff, and several former
senior officials in the cabinet and government-run companies had been indicted
or convicted.
According to the New York Times, “The
president’s brother, a former lawmaker, has been charged with accepting bribes
from two bankers. Prosecutors said the bankers asked him to help prevent
regulators from shutting down their banks. The bankers have been charged with
embezzlement and bribery, and their banks’ operations have been suspended.” Moreover, Kim was just
the latest in a series of South Korean presidents politically damaged by
corruption scandals. It would appear that personal profiting from one’s
governmental (or business) position was at the very least a part of the South
Korean culture, if not tacitly accepted in government circles.
In my albeit rather limited
association with South Korean business, I have found the organizational culture
to be extremely hierarchical in the sense that officials at the top have near
carte-blanche (i.e., near absolute) power from the perspective of their
subordinates. Additionally, the underlings tend to cover up any mistakes or
failures from their bosses, whose world is thus held as though in the clouds.
In such a context, corruption can be rife.
It should be
noted that the extreme psychological distance in the organizational world in
South Korea is not without a basis in fact. The mentality of an employee at a
customer service call center is oceans away from that of even a mid-level
manager, who in turn can be distinguished from an organizational leader. Often
times, only the latter has the maturity to relegate the red tape by
prioritizing common sense and even just that which is natural in human-to-human
interaction. It is not uncommon, for instance, for people used to a certain
height to instinctively sense and relegate the gate-keeping games of the herd.
I suspect that in South Korea, the latter know they are eons away from their
superiors. The latter can use this natural distance to their own advantage in
covering up bribery and kick-backs. To this extent, the distance assumed by the
underlings is unjustified, even if on a general mentality basis it is fully
natural (and justified).
Therefore, even
though the corruption in South Korean government and business is hardly
justified from an ethical standpoint, a Nietzschean would quickly point out
that distance is natural, even necessary, for the strong such that they not
become infected by the narrowness of the herd. In the West, the organizational
creature can be rather insistent that its mentality must be binding even on
those above. In South Korean culture, by contrast, a lower mentality may have a
better sense of its place, and thus of the inherently limited nature of its
reach. That is to say, the presumptuousness of the herd animal is checked,
whereas it roams like an undisciplined child in the West. The question
regarding South Korea is thus how corruption may be checked without tossing the
baby out with the bathwater.
Choe Sang-Hun, “South Korean President Apologizes for Corruption Scandals,” The New York Times, July 24, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/world/asia/lee-myung-bak-of-south-korea-apologizes-for-corruption-scandals.html?ref=world