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But there are profound and crucial differences. To start with, golf is an expensive sport and hiking is practically free. A day on the golf course costs W200,000 (US$200) and even more when club membership fee is taken into account, but you can walk in the mountains for a small park entry fee. Golf is a time-consuming sport; it can take days. Hiking doesn’t take nearly as long. Given the nature of the sport, golf also requires plenty of incidental expenses besides clubs, for the clothes and the entertainment that go with it, while all you need for hiking is a pair of sturdy boots. That is why golf is a sport for the rich and hiking the common man’s exercise.

Now, that does not mean that one is better than the other. Each to his own: let the rich man display his wealth and the poor man do what he can afford. It is one of the achievements of the Republic of Korea that it guarantees that choice: anyone can do what they like on holiday without fear of interference. The state must not punish public officials for playing golf.

The media is concentrating on how the prime minister’s golfing trip was arranged and what backroom deals were plotted on the course. Of course the public is curious to know if any of the premier’s golfing buddies who are under investigation for irregularities tried to lobby him, and whether that violated any laws or was a breach of political ethics. Of course, any such nudges, winks and whispers may be exchanged on the golf course as much as on the hiking trail. And while golfers themselves like to make out that it is a refined sort of activity, there is no point denying that bets are sometimes made, but it is hard to see how that is any worse than people playing a round of poker in the privacy of their hotel room.

All well and good. But the prime minister, a man we are given to understand is so devoted to the game that his health suffers if he has to forgo it for a day, is a core member of an administration that has put closing the wealth gap at the top of the national agenda and staked its very legitimacy on the issue. And while the divisive and confrontational terminology the administration employs to describe the problem smacks of political calculation, nobody denies that it is a ticking time bomb and its resolution a national task.

Here they are, vowing to attack the problem, accusing previous governments of falling short in their efforts to achieve more equal distribution of wealth, condemning mass unemployment, growing income disparity and the hardship endured by slum dwellers and the homeless at Seoul Station, all because of the "casino economy." The least they can do is steer clear of gormless questions like, "What's the difference between golf and hiking?" An environment where people spend hundreds of thousands a head per day for nothing much and nobody knows where the money comes from is not for them. They cannot afford to chat and commiserate with businessmen who are under investigation for irregularities. Members of this government are fond of bemoaning privilege, deriding Seoul citizens living south of the Han River and Seoul National University graduates as symbols of a heartless establishment. But in the eyes of the people, where is the difference between Lee Hae-chan on a golf junket and any previous government?

Of course, nobody expects our leaders to live on the street because the homeless do. But it is a basic moral guideline in any market economy or liberal democratic society at least to refrain from building a stately mansion next to a shantytown. If they talk about the wealth gap and attack the "casino economy" while doing the very things they decry out of the public eye and then lie about it, are they any different from the vested interests of the past? After three years in power, the Roh administration has already cemented its own privileges.