CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Elite Cartels 103
Korea: ‘‘money politics’’ and control
Governing Korea has often been lucrative, but it has never been easy.
With a ‘‘strong state’’ ruling over a ‘‘contentious society’’ (Koo, 1993:
231–249; Clifford, 1994: 11) of 48 million citizens on the southern
portion of a rocky peninsula, a heritage of colonial domination and civil
war, few natural resources, and a national capital just forty miles from the
world’s most tensely guarded border, the Republic of Korea has spent the
past half-century in a state of crisis (Clifford, 1994: 7; Kang, 2002a: 50).
Its successes therefore are all the more remarkable: from desperate poverty
after the armistice of 1953 the country has climbed into the first rank
of the world’s economies. Authoritarian government backed by violence
and a tightly integrated national elite kept civil society, political parties,
and electoral politics weak for three decades, yet gave way to democratic
forces in 1987. Out of unpromising circumstances Korea has launched an
increasingly competitive and legitimate democracy, so that by now there
seems little threat of a relapse into authoritarianism. Corruption has been
integral to all of these developments, supporting a hegemonic elite, aiding
early economic development, and exacerbating deferred economic risks
and political resentments. It remains a serious concern today.
Korea’s Elite Cartel corruption outwardly resembles the ‘‘money politics’’
seen in Japan (chapter 4). Very large payments by businesses to
political elites – sometimes as ‘‘contributions’’ to parties or foundations,
often as outright bribes – bought major policy favors. Despite Korea’s
many similarities to Japan, however, I will argue that its money politics
was simpler, more centralized, and helped maintain tightly integrated
state–business–military networks of elites. Korean corruption took place
in a setting of weaker institutions, and was less a system of specific
exchanges between business and political sectors than a continuous
incentive system integral to rule by a political–business–bureaucratic
network (Tat, 1996: 50; Moran, 1999: 582; Steinberg, 2000: 209).
Elite networks included, at various times and in differing kinds of balance,
top state officials (notably, presidents, their families, and their
personal entourages); the heads of the chaebols (huge family-controlled
industrial conglomerates); segments of the bureaucratic elite; and military
leaders as well. These networks were bound together in part by
corrupt incentives, but also by regional and family loyalties, the threat
from the North, and a continuing need to stave off political and economic
competition. A weak civil society and traditional attitudes toward power
and authority facilitated this style of regime; so did its ability, from the
mid-1970s onwards, to deliver economic development and rising living
standards on a breathtaking scale.