Recently, the former President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide by jumping off a cliff, because he was surrounded by a corruption/bribery scandal. What is the essence of this incident, and the essence of many Asian politicians often “caught in corruption scandals? This post wants to analyze this topic.

East Asian societies’ “cooperative mode” has very strict regulations about the business-government relationship. The Western societies’ “democratic mode” also has very strict regulations about it. However, as the East is trying to transform itself to be more like the West, as the East is Westernizing its basic political concepts, its traditional cooperative social mode has not changed much.

In America, Democracy is a hat, a piece of fig-leaf. The business-government cooperation takes on this hat and wears this leaf, and is able to rationalize and legitimize all of its “corrupt, undemocratic” activities. From the very beginning of American politics, businesses and industries were able to promote their spokespeople and associated interest groups to the highest levels of government. Behind the President is a huge collection of different interest groups and forces. In the Congress, these groups are able to turn their agendas into laws. All of those actions are considered completely reasonable and legal in American politics, under the guise of the “Democratic Process”. And these are not all, the interest groups are able to turn their ideas and wishes into top-level agendas for the nation, through sponsoring various formal and serious thinktanks and research bodies. As a result, all the conflicts of interest inherent in the business-government relationship are suddenly “smoothed over” under the big hat of democracy. Under this hat, periodically there’ll be some “big punishment” or “big case” against an individual corrupt businessman or politician, an “bad apple”. To the naive public and democracy-lovers, these big punishments look like they “maintain the justice” of the society – in reality they simply serve to maintain the famous Western Democratic rule of “Hiding and Finding”.

But in Asia, such a hat and figleaf don’t exist within its social traditions. Today, as Asia “modernizes”, its traditional business-government cooperation model is being forced to co-exist with the modern democratic principles. As a President, he was in a very awkward position. In order to develop the economy, the traditional Asian business-gov’t cooperation mode must be preserved; but in order to “modernize politics”, the Western Democratic system’s legitimized tolerance of corruption must also be respected. And as a result, if there was a Asian politician “cleaner” than his Western counterpart, but without the proper legal and traditional systems to protect him, he may still be found in such “scandals” and forced to commit suicide.

Therefore, if only Asian businessmen can legally bribe their politicians like in the West, they and their politicians wouldn’t have to bear the name of “corruption”, it would simply be “lobbying”. And maybe this tragedy can be avoided. Asian businessmen and politicians simply do not have the luxury of that hat and figleaf.

The tragedy of the Korean President was not his personal tragedy, and not a Korean tragedy, but a tragedy of Westernization by Eastern societies. If Eastern societies do not look deeply at the core of the West, but only at the concepts of the West. If they do not look deeply at West’s history, but only at West’s present. If they do not look deeply at the unspoken rules of the West, but only at the written rules of the west. Then his tragedy will not be the last.

Many critics of Chinese politics attribute the problem of corruption in China as a result of the “one-party dicatorship”. Then why is the Korean society that is much further along the West’s cherished “multi-party democracy” model unable to elect a President without corruption (3 of the past 4 presidents were arrested or killed due to corruption)? It is not a problem with their presidents, but a problem with their system. It’s not a problem with the original system they copied from, but the problem of them not fully copying the system. In computer science lingo, when Korea copied the West’s model, they did a shallow copy and not deep copy. They copied the concepts on the surface, but missed many subtle aspects.

So what can Korea and the rest of Asia do? They have two choices, either do a deep copy, or do not copy at all. I prefer the second way.