In Michael Johnston's 'Syndromes of Corruption', he labelled corruption
in South Korea as that of 'Elite Cartels', however if one were to go beyond
this label and try to characterise corruption in South Korea it would reveal a
more entrenched and pervasive process that the citizens identify, and endorse
in. One could say that corruption in South Korea is almost a way of life and
therefore combatting corruption in a state such as this is especially difficult
as, there exists a history of close interactions between the public and the
private sectors and the dominance of the elite classes is clearly identifiable
in almost every sphere.
Since Korean culture consists heavily of influences from Confucian
philosophy and the state is characterised by authoritarian bureaucracy, there
exist very close ties between one's personal life and the public one.
Therefore it becomes very difficult for one to distinguish between the
roles that one has to play when in power and work effectively free from any
influence arising from personal ties. Another important factor to take into
consideration is that pervasive corruption is found at almost all levels of the
government. For those at the bottom of the hierarchy, bribery becomes a lucrative incentive to
increase personal gain as their incomes are quite low. The bigger problem still
remains at the higher levels of the society and government where those with enough
power and wealth extend it to influence the government. Private business enjoy
a great amount of leeway as they often engage in malpractices such as collusion
to appropriate bigger profits without the fear of being penalised from the
authority.
In a state where the incidence of corruption is specially high, it
takes a strong political will in order to make any anti-corruption agency
function effectively, however this remains a critical problem in South Korea
where numerous such attempts have failed simply because those found guilty of
corruption are not punished as severely as one would expect them to be –
especially because those in the public sector often have something to gain from
the outcomes of the corrupt practices. Another problem is the extremely low
levels of trust of the citizens in their government and weak protection
measures to whistleblowers which makes it difficult for citizens to report
incidences of corrupt practices.
Therefore, any measures to combat corruption in South Korea need to
begin with solving the problem of social hierarchy in the society. The only way
this can be done is to strengthen the institutions and revise the laws which,
in themselves are quite lax and can be taken advantage of by those in power. A
second measure that needs to be adopted is stronger protection laws for
whistleblowers in order to give citizens more power to report incidences of
corruption while feeling secured from the those in power. A third measure that
could result in an effective mechanism to combat corrupt practices by the
larger business firms is to provide financial support to medium and small
enterprises in order for them to grow and diversify their business which would
result in an equitable distribution of power over between large and small
business firms – and eventually decrease the power of the larger business firms
in the economic and political sectors.
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