(Assignment 2) Keerthi Purushothaman

“South Korea: A Tripartite Alliance” – Jueeli More

This essay describes the different perspectives through which corruption in South Korea is viewed through a presumably economic lens. The author underlines the complexity involved in analysing this corruption either purely through an economic lens or a historical lens. She quotes three scholars who explain this corruption in different ways. The first is by Wedeman, who argues that “dividend-taking”, the form of corruption most prevalent in South Korea serves to boost economic development. The second scholar is Lee, who states that the corruption in South Korea is due to the complexity of its tax laws, widespread tax evasion, and collusion between the private industries and the state. The third explanation is by You and Khagram who note the high correlation of income inequality and corruption, which is true in South Korea. The essay ends with a question of whether democratisation has exacerbated corruption in the economy. However, with none of the three scholars focusing on the pre-democratic South Korean state, it is difficult to deduce.

South Korea is an example of an elite cartel in Michael Johnston’s ‘Syndromes of Corruption’, which the author fails to mention explicitly. The three seemingly different explanations offered above by scholars can be seen as different facets of corruption in an elite cartel. The author of this essay also provides the curious case of the chief of an anti-corruption campaign, Lee Wan Koo, who was accused of taking bribes. While this case is fascinating due to the obvious irony, it does not serve as a good example for the arguments the author has consolidated because it appears to be a case of simple bribery, and not a case of sharing dividends or due to complex tax laws or income inequality.

“Case-Study of Political Corruption: A Case of North Korea” – Sreelakshmi R

The author of this essay has chosen North Korea to study corruption using the political perspective. She considers two aspects of this corruption – “human rights abuse” and what she broadly terms as “government’s illicit activities”. At the outset, she acknowledges the lack of reliable information sources on North Korea as a drawback. The essay, therefore, uses pieces of information that contribute to the popular imagination of North Korea as examples of political corruption. It blames North Korea’s socialist roots, which favours collective rights over individual rights, as the foundation for the human rights abuses that occur within its territory. Unsubstantiated claims of the government indulging in trafficking and counterfeiting are given, which are supposed to fund North Korea’s nuclear programme.

Despite the limitations in collecting any other kind of information about the country, over-dependence of hearsay remains a major drawback of this analysis. The author has also failed to account for the lack of democracy in North Korea. Dictatorships do not follow the same logic as a democratic state due to lack of accountability. Hence, even if the allegations levied against North Korea were true, one would have to depend on a moralistic, normative framework to term these as instances of political corruption.

“Official Moghuls of the Termite Kingdom” – Tryphena

The author of this essay argues that corruption in North Korea satisfies Johnston’s description of “Official Moghuls”. The author gives the example of a public execution and social conditioning of people to behave in a certain way. This can be read alongside with Foucault’s “spectacle of the scaffold”, both as simultaneous processes by which a sovereign asserts his power. The aforementioned criticism of analysing corruption in a non-democratic state is strengthened this way.

She uses the poor rank of North Korea on the Global Hunger Index, presence of an alleged black market, and social conditioning of its citizens as examples of corruption. According to Johnston, in states like China, Kenya, and Indonesia, the power lies in the hand of a few politicians who only try to maximise their wealth, either by turning the state into a profit-seeking venture, or by granting quasi-political power to private industrialists. He argues that the distinguishing feature of Official Moghuls are the resultant connections between wealth and power. The three examples given by the author do not exemplify these connections. Hence, the argument of North Korea being an Official Moghul is weakened.