The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [212]
The damaging lack of coordination of economic, political, and military objectives in the DMZ incursions was important evidence of Kim Jong Il's governing style. According to a South Korean intelligence official, the reclusive leader was "governing by memorandum," accepting separate reports, and making separate decisions in connection with the various functional groups constituting the North Korean party and governmental apparatus. Unlike his father, Kim Jong Il was reported to have little taste for official meetings at which a more coherent policy could have been thrashed out. With the death of Kim Il Sung, according to Adrian Buzo, an Australian academic and former diplomat, a transfer of power had taken place from an individual to a system. And the system was not working.
POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE IN SEOUL
High school ties are cherished in South Korea, and high school alumni meetings are occasions for important celebrations. Such a meeting, in the Crystal Ballroom of the Lotte Hotel, one of Seoul's most glitzy skyscrapers, on October 16, 1995, was the occasion for a brief, unplanned encounter that touched off an earth-shaking political scandal, uncovering a system of payoffs that had undergirded South Korean politics for decades. Within a very short time, the burgeoning scandal brought about the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of former presidents Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan and the convictions of thirteen other former high-ranking military officers and of nine of the country's most important business leaders. The political earthquake made the ROK's democracy more responsive to public opinion and thereby less controllable by the central government, affecting and often complicating the government's dealings with the United States and with the North.
One of the celebrants at the school reunion, a businessman named Ha Chong Uk, was more glum than glad, being desperately worried about a problem involving money and politics. As toasts were being exchanged and a band was playing, Ha saw potential salvation in a fellow high school alumnus, Park Kye Dong, who had been elected to the National Assembly two years earlier. Ha asked Assemblyman Park to step out of the noisy ballroom into the hotel lobby, where he proceeded to explain his predicament.
His problem dated back to February 1993, as President Roh Tae Woo was leaving office. Ha, in a small family business with his father as brokers for shipping companies, received a strange request from the local branch of the Shinhan Bank, where his firm did business. The bank manager asked permission to deposit 11 billion won (about $14 million) of someone else's money in an account using the father's name. Because of favors owed to the bank, Ha agreed.
Ha did not think much about it until several other events occurred. In August 1993, in one of the most important of his domestic reforms, President Kim Young Sam decreed a "real name" bank deposit system, under which fictitious or borrowed names on bank accounts could no longer be used to hide or launder money for illegal political purposes or other shady dealings. The next step was a new tax system, to begin in January 1996, when taxes would be assessed on interest earned from all bank accounts.
At that point, businessman Ha had a serious problem. He had learned that the money in the account under his father's borrowed name actually belonged to former president Roh-yet his father would soon be liable for paying nearly $1 million in taxes on the accumulated interest. He couldn't pay it. Even if Roh provided the money to pay the taxes, Ha feared