CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Elite Cartels 105
a personalized view of authority often structured by patron–client relationships,
and a view of the individual as acting within a defined place in a
larger social matrix. These values – more deeply entrenched than in Japan
(Pye, 1997: 221) – discouraged broad social initiatives to check the state
and perpetuated a ‘‘zero-sum’’ conception of power (Clifford, 1994: 14;
Neher, 1994; Steinberg, 2000: 212–213, 221, 231; Koo, 2002: 45;
Chang, 2002) in which the gains of any one person or group were seen
as coming at the expense of all others. For thirty-five years, therefore,
successive governments faced little sustained political opposition yet had
tense relationships with society. Governments did not represent or draw
upon support from society but rather contended with it, seeking to retain
control (Koo, 2002: 42). Strong, if diffuse, resentments of government,
and among citizens themselves, could break out in unpredictable ways.
President Rhee Syng Man was toppled in 1960 by massive student
demonstrations and critical news reports; Park Chung Hee, his eventual
successor, held occasional elections in part to placate his American backers
but his victories were not particularly decisive.
To complicate matters, many key institutions were weak. Korea has
had six republics since independence in 1948, each with its own
Constitution. Political parties have been organized or reconstituted by
successive presidents and their rivals, rather than emerging out of ideologies
or major segments of society (Park Byeog-Seog, 1995: 166). There
have been over 100 active parties since 1948, and the 1990 merger of
three conservative parties into the Democratic Liberal Party – an attempt
to replicate Japan’s LDP – did not last (Tat, 1996: 53; Cheng and Chu,
2002: 43–44). When Kim Young Sam relaunched an inherited party, en
route to the presidency in 1992, it was the tenth different party membership
of his career (Steinberg, 2000: 224–225). The national bureaucracy
attracted increasing numbers of able and educated civil servants after
1960, but key segments were controlled by presidential patronage
(Johnson, 1987: 154; Kang, 2002a). The military’s officer corps was
riven by secret societies. One – Hanahoe, or the ‘‘one mind society’’ –
was powerful enough to help put Chun Doo Hwan into the presidency in
1980 (Moran, 1998: 164). For years official institutions and duties have
contended, often at a disadvantage, with the influence of ‘‘blood, region,
and school’’ (Hwang, 1997: 100) – loyalties to family and clan, to one’s
part of the country and the leaders who came from there, and to one’s
university (see also Kang, 2002a: 53–55).
Presidents could rule through the threat of force, but governing was
difficult. Rhee ran Korea for over a decade in an autocratic fashion,
financing his regime in part through business ‘‘contributions’’ (Woo,
1991: 65–69). Yet parts of his government were captured by rent-seeking