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A mid-ranking Finance Ministry official sent an e-mail to reporters saying he wants to hear about the background of the ministry's 2003 decision to sell Korea Exchange Bank to the offshore fund Lone Star either privately or in public from the former finance ministers Kim Jin-pyo and Jeon Yun-churl and former Financial Supervisory Commission chairman Lee Jung-jae. It was his reaction to the prosecution's announcement that it indicted the ministry's former Financial Policy Bureau director-general, Byeon Yang-ho, for leading the KEB sale at a knockdown price, and that none of Kim’s superiors did anything wrong. "It's common sense in a bureaucracy that nothing can be done without the say-so and support of one's superiors," the official said. The public agree.
Board of Audit and Inspection chairman Jeon Yun-churl was finance minister when the KEB sale negotiation was initiated, and Uri Party lawmaker Kim Jin-pyo held the portfolio when the negotiation was concluded. Lee Jung-jae was the FSC chairman who approved Lone Star as KEB buyer by designating KEB as ailing. Now, they evaded their responsibilities by telling prosecutors they only received reports but issued no specific instructions. If we believe them, the republic is in a state where the director-general of a ministry bureau can finagle the sale of a bank worth around W1 trillion (US$1=W926) all by his lonesome. It amounts to saying South Korea is not a state and its government is a phantom.
Top officials in bureaucratic organizations do not approve things at their discretion. They do so with a sense that they will have to take the fall when something goes wrong. Why would subordinates otherwise submit reports to their superiors? If commanders at courts martial of subalterns who blundered in a military operation habitually denied all responsibility, how could their units function? What soldier in his right mind would obey such a commander's order to charge?
"Working as a civil servant is frightening and calls for extreme caution," says the Finance Ministry official. Our civil service is coming apart at the seams.
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