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People
speak of the growing problem in hushed tones, respectful
of cultural diversity. For some, the encounters are
limited to the supermarket line where some South Koreans
brusquely cut in as they do at the airport where police
shrug in subservient deference.
Filipinos are ever tolerant. A few resort to comparing
Koreans to the Japanese, noting the latter as more
courteous, more refined. The comparisons are unfair. It
may be psychic restitution—an anemic attempt at
tolerating cultural friction with racial stereotypes.
But the
incidents of fist-fights in school yards have increased
as have fears of foreign criminal syndicates invaded
social banter. Those are far more serious than
coffee-shop talk of strange out-of-towners turning
leased homes into illegal dormitories.
Unfortunately, it is not only to neighborhoods that
curiosities are imported. Urban legends have started in
shoptalk around water coolers and now, even boardrooms
where talks of corporate anomalies focus.
Asked
for comment, one expatriate partnered with a South
Korean surmised, “These fellows do not have an FCPA to
guide them, so they pretty much do want they want. Some,
seeing the
Philippines
among the list of the most corrupt, think this is a
corruption-friendly neighborhood”.
That is
an indictment. And painful as it is, it takes a
foreigner to slap us with the truth. The American
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act does not guarantee
integrity, but at least, it is statutory recognition of
what constitutes wrongdoing.
Not so,
it seems, with one of Korea’s most recognized. The
increasing animosity cannot be denied. On Panay Island,
protesting farmers and fishermen, up against a Korean
multinational forcibly erecting a coal-fired facility
amid farmlands and fishing waters, rallied for the
latter’s ejection. They accused local politicians of
selling off to the foreigners. The island’s NGO,
Responsible Illongos for Sustainable Energy (RISE), even
trooped to the Senate.
One
writer attributed the conflicts to a culture where
younglings are indoctrinated into the martial arts not
simply as defensive options but as means of solving
differences using brute force as the default. Columnist
Antonio Abaya might have been overly simplistic. Or,
perhaps, amazingly perceptive and profound.
The
recent accusations of insidious corruption, secret sums
and bribery against Samsung Corp. are cases in point.
These resurrect latent fears that adversity might cross
to the corporate world and its detail reawakens the
martial-law nightmare. Here, Abaya’s analysis attains
ominous significance.
The
growing numbers of corporate anomalies that mirror
governance by brute impunity compel us to relate to
Korea’s
Samsung scandals. It does not help that Gloria Arroyo’s
military has degenerated into the methodology of martial
law sans requisite declarations. The subterfuge is
extensive and the Samsung scandal’s shibboleths are
strangely similar with both those under martial law and
in our resurgent military-backed version.
The
Samsung corruption scandal involves allegations that its
chairman, Lee Kun Hee, masterminded massive schemes of
bribery and illegal transactions.
These
are nothing new. Critics claim “Samsung runs a vast
network of bribery and influence peddling through the
government, the Judicial branch and the media”
(International Herald Tribune, November 6, 2007). Its
affiliates spent more than $285 million for
advertisements in television and radio stations,
newspapers and magazines last year. The sum accounted
for 5.6 percent of Korea’s 4.6-trillion-won news media
advertising market.
Samsung
vehemently denies the charges but in previous scandals,
its executives have already been convicted of illegally
providing funds to politicians.
This
time, Samsung faces a “potent” whistleblower. Its former
legal counsel, Kim Yong Chul, says he “had been
personally involved in bribing and in fabricating court
evidence on behalf of Lee and Samsung.”
Kim
said, “A basic responsibility for all Samsung executives
is to do illegal lobbying, [and] buying people with
money. Samsung regularly provided politicians,
government officials, tax collectors, prosecutors,
judges, journalists and scholars with cash bribes and
expensive gifts. The cash bribes were handed over in
packages disguised as CDs or monthly magazines, or in
briefcases or suitcases, depending on the sums.”
Sounds
familiar, doesn’t it?
In 1996,
Lee was convicted of giving and arranging bribes to
ex-South Korean President Roh Tae Woo, a former general.
He was handed a two-year prison term he never served.
The
Seoul High Court also found former and current heads of
Samsung Everland guilty of selling convertible bonds to
Lee’s children at below-market prices. These were aimed
at enabling Lee to hand over control of the conglomerate
to his son, Jae Yong, an executive at Samsung
Electronics, as Everland serves as Samsung’s holding
company.
Analysts
note that “corruption and bribery have been hallmarks of
South Korea’s business and political worlds for decades.
Their roots can be found in cozy ties developed during
years of military-backed authoritarian rule when
family-run conglomerates, or Chaebol, were given the
role of leading South Korea’s drive toward
industrialization.”
The
Philippines nurtures its own “cozy ties” between a
military-backed authoritarian and business. The old
dictatorship cronies perpetuate unpunished and
unaccountable. Shameless, many live off behest
accommodations, inherited stolen wealth, false
respectability and dubious entitlement.
Viewed
against the increasingly obvious military backing of
latent authoritarian rule and the rise of another
Philippine oligarchy among political cronies, it is not
difficult to see the relevance of recent events and the
ominous specters that the Samsung corruption scandals
mirror in our neighborhood. |
