Corruption in Korea

In ordering state prosecutors to hunt for the alleged millions of dollars hidden away by one of his predecessors, South Korean President Kim Yong-sam has evinced determination to establish a clean government.

But, after three decades of military dictatorship, such cleaning up may be proving harder than the first civilian head of state since 1961 had imagined. He is now confronted with a chaotic situation, especially after his former political foe, Kim Dae-jung, admitted yesterday that he had accepted US$2.5 million dollars from president Roh Tae-woo, whose alleged illegal fortune is now being dug up by the prosecutors.

According to Kim Dae-jung, President Kim Yong-sam himself also received hundreds of millions of dollars. The opposition leader said the "donations" were made during the 1993 presidential election campaign. According to reports, Roh's questionable fortune may exceed $100 million, an amount far greater than the South Koreans are willing to tolerate.

The anti-corruption trend seems to be getting more popular in several Asian countries, particularly in those countries which have recently freed themselves from the yoke of dictatorships, military or civilian.

South of the Korean peninsula, the widow of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos continues to wait for a Supreme Court decision on her appeal against a 1993 conviction under which she was jailed for 18 years for corruption committed with her husband during his 20 years of rule, which ended in disgrace in 1986. She still faces more than 100 criminal and civil suits on allegations ranging from tax evasion to illegal money transfers and graft.

But the new tendency away from corruption in both South Korea and the Philippines may not extend to other Asian countries in which corrupt leaders are still at work. Different countries have different cultures and different levels of political maturity.

In South Korea and the Philippines the people rose to stop corrupt leaders who were bleeding state coffers dry.

But some other nations are quite tolerant to what most of the world believes to be the most terrible breach of the people's trust as well as a dangerous destabilizing factor. That tolerance may exist because of the absence of a political system of checks and balances; because the people appear to be powerless against administrations which have become too strong.

In such countries corrupt officials have managed to gag the people's complaints about corruption and have made their populations adapt themselves to the rotten situation.

Compared with the corrupt rulers of these countries, the ousted leaders of South Korea and the Philippines are only mediocre corruptionists. They neglected to lock the door against a civilian government takeover and forgot that as long as they pursued effective economic development programs there was no way to avoid the emergence of the middle class which later helped in their downfall.

For us in Indonesia, the Korean case could be a good lesson if we still care to learn. Not only does power tend to corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely, as Lord Acton put it, but it is also clear now that corrupt leaders only enjoy the money they steal from their nations as long they live and that there is no way they can protect their heirs.

But this also depends on the quality of the nation concerned.