The Experience of Democracy and Bureaucracy in South Korea by Tobin Im

Author:Tobin Im [Im, Tobin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration, Public Policy, General, World, Asian, History & Theory
ISBN: 9781787149397
Google: v3U4DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 42297625
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Significant Reduction of Bureaucratic Corruption

In Korea, Bureaucratic corruption and misuse of public authority has dramatically declined as the result of the constant pursuit of government to reform unreasonable regulations. Regulation was essentially regarded as one of the major sources of authority and influence of the bureaucrats in Korea. Public officials have the authority to make new challenges in the private business possible or not and sometimes they can promote certain behaviors that were regarded as a breakthrough to social problems with regulatory tools. With this authority and discretion of regulatory officials, persons in the private sector have good reasons to access the regulatory bureaucrats confidentially. From a private point of view, it can be a much preferred strategy to access public officials and request a favorable decision to struggle to survive in a competitive market. According to public choice theory, the profits generated from regulation are called rent and the effort of the private sector to influence regulatory officials is called rent-seeking behavior. The more rent-seeking behavior exists, the lower the possibility of a society that can achieve democracy. So, in nondemocratic countries, it is apparent that bureaucratic influence is large enough to make citizens in general consider rent-seeking behavior as a tool to solve their own problems.

Official corruption is a rampant phenomenon in the course of private sector rent-seeking behavior. Officials set up unfair practices such as giving some profits or benefits to a particular business or private entity. According to Sagong’s (1996) research, the analysis of causes of corruption in the construction sector, the amount of bribes are affected even by rent as well as its discretion. In addition, individual corruption cases are occurring in the construction sector, the rent which is created from regulations may be the root cause of the massive bribery scandal which take place in the relentless and systematic, sometimes in unethical way. The fact that rampant corruption of officials is due to unreasonable regulations would also be already identified repeatedly by multiple studies. Of course, in Korea, the government has continued to reduce constantly rent created by regulation. This means that government influence decreased and people have to compete in their business in a fair mode. When people confront and fail in some projects, they attribute it to themselves, not government aid or authority. Naturally, bureaucratic corruption can be sharply decreased.

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