top of page

Chief Kim: An Analysis of Corruptions Within Chaebols


Introduction

Chaebols are large companies in South Korea (henceforth, Korea) that are usually owned by a wealthy family. Chaebols have been found to have a gigantic economic impact on the Korean economy of today (Eom and Lee 2010, 625). To determine how well a chaebol is doing is to observe from the inside and not simply look at company financial reports, because it is most likely that they are not stated with the intention of being truthful. Such inappropriate accounting acts are done in order to attract investors and consumers, maximizing their power among the Korean and international markets (Oh 2017, 247). This phenomenon of polishing the outside of the chaebol while remaining rotten on the inside is called corruption. It occurs when chaebol executives perform illegal or unethical acts such as bribery to earn illegal profit. This whole process will bring increased economic benefit to the chaebol and in the end, these benefits will fall to those executives who performed the illegal acts. Korea is famous for its large number of corruptions among the OECD countries, both financially and politically by individuals in power (Oh 2017, 243). As conveyed in the drama Chief Kim, corruption within a chaebol caused by board executives can result in a downfall of the chaebol and suffering for the employees, which creates an issue in the contemporary Korean economy.

Greed for wealth

Money is perhaps the most valuable tangible possession in the world one can own, as it is able to buy items ranging from daily essentials to expensive luxuries. As a person rises in the societal hierarchy, they will have higher demand of money to satisfy oneself. Within the company, they are obligated to go to fancy restaurants with their coworkers. Within the family, they have to provide the best education for their kids as they possibly can. They also have to spend money on themselves or their love ones, and any other people that they care about. We are living in an era where money is valued higher than many other personal values such as dignity and respect. With the exponentially increasing amount of spending occurring in this Korean dominantly capitalistic society, it is not uncommon for an individual to perform unethical tasks to earn money.

In the dramaChief Kim, two of the Vice Presidents of TQ, Jo Minyeong and Go Mangeun best represented the symbol of greed for money in the show. In episode 10, they were found to be intentionally increasing the cost of utilities such as the price of food in the only convenient stores within the area, such that TQ workers could only buy their overpriced items. Ms. Jo and Mr. Go then negotiated with the managers and embezzled a fixed percentage of this money. To be compatible to handle one of the largest chaebols in Korea, one must possess a great deal of ability and skills. However, people that have extra desire for wealth will misuse their ability on the wrong thing, which then leads to the disastrous future of the chaebol. Such misbehaviour will not only cause the chaebol itself to collapse, but hundreds of employees will also be affected by their greed for wealth. In the example from Chief Kim, the victims include truck drivers that deliver TQ retail goods who have to spend extra money to feed themselves, and TQ headquarter employees who might get laid off after the imprisonment of several executives of TQ, making TQ’s market values to drop and can no longer support that many employees.

Another example of greed for money is that in the first episode of the show, the main character Gim Seongyong purposely performed illegal accounting for smaller companies to polish their accounting books to show to the responsible governor and to attract more investors to make more money for the companies. From this example, it is shown that cooking books or other accounting misconducts can directly affect the lives of many employees of these companies as they are not getting paid as much as what they were promised because the company, in reality, is not making as much as it shows. In addition, the bosses are taking money away from them for personal usage. Another group of people that are affected include the shareholders. They were lied to about how well the company is doing. Thus, they will lose a great chunk of investments into the company. In the end, that money will be landed on those people who are causing this trouble. Accounting scandals will only result in short term benefit, as evidences of scandals are exposed to the world, the company will then likely undergo bankruptcy. To conclude, the whole vicious process all started with a greedy individual who neglected ethics and is paid from these bosses to misbehave illegally while harming the innocents financially.

One of the real life example of greed for wealth that leads to disastrous future for oneself is the former president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, who laundered money to a Switzerland bank during his presidency and was finally caught after he stepped down on May. 20, 2008 (Gold 2009, 93). Although this event did not harm anyone financially but it did hurt the political party that Chen belonged in, the DPP, to lose the next presidential election as well as majority of other elections during the same year (Romberg 2008, 1).

With these three examples above, corruption is shown to be a pair of scissors that cuts the trust from the general public in a company or political party right in the middle (Sajó2003, 171). One of the main cause of corruption, greed for wealth is shown to be a major motivation for one to perform tasks that can hurt the company and ultimately, harm innocent individuals whose only trying to make a living to support themselves as well as their family.

Greed for power

The amount of money that one earns is positively correlated to the amount of power they obtain in a company. The power is thus, another desire that people hunt for and would sacrifice self-values for. To maintain power, ones should make the people below themselves in a company management hierarchy to obey them. Therefore, allowing people to remain on the top and gain extra income and respect from others regardless of their quality of performance. On a bigger scale, the company must remain on the top in the whole market among all competitors to give the executives in that particular company even more power across the whole market. When the desire for such power overwhelms the conscious for justice of one person, then they will perform unethical tasks to ensure their job security and reputation.

In order to maintain or gain power among a group or company, some will forcefully tell others to obey them. One of such example from the drama Chief Kimis that in the second half of episode 5, when employees from TQ worker union was having a strike due to TQ forcing them to work overtime causing health issue for the elder employees. The person in charge, Jo Minyeong hired thugs to violently abuse the protesters to force them to obey the unreasonable decisions by TQ headquarter. As shown from this example, the person in charge took care of the situation in such a way to avoid leakage of the news to the media which can potentially harm the chaebol’s public image and more importantly, to ensure their own job security and protect their public image. If the news gets leaked, public apologies have to be given by the executives and this will harm their reputation among the nation. From this example, innocent people were harmed and their voices were buried under the ground simply because of one person’s greed to protect her position and reputation. With a such selfish executive on the top of a company, the company is likely going to collapse in short amount of time.

Another example from Chief Kimof unethical performance to ensure their power in the chaebol is in the end of episode 14 when the chairman Park Hyeondo told Jo Minyeong to take care, or rather, kill, Gim Seongyong, who led thousands of young workers of TQ convenience store to file a complaint to the chairman and make him give a public apology on the television while paying all the unpaid wages. Murder is for sure the most horrible thing an individual can possibly have done in this world. However, due to the sense of threat that his position and reputation might be in danger, chairman Park tried to silent whoever stands in his way of being above all others and remain powerful was to kill him. This examples shows that the desire to remain powerful is a great motive for one to perform acts that one would never have possibly done.

As shown above, the greed to remain powerful or gain power is also a fearful motive that can lead one to do things that may either harm other innocent individual or the company who they work their life for. These incidents then progressively build up within the chaebol to darken the future of the chaebol as it corrupts.

Covering up past mistakes

A leader is no doubt the most influential person among a group with the power that they obtain. However, when this leader makes a false move. There will be a high chance that the group will collapse, or in terms of chaebol, this chaebol will be involved in corruption. These false moves may be based on what is traditionally believed to be the more important factors to run a team or business such as ability to make more profit and the ability to work more efficiently and forgets about the importance of compassion and caring for others (CC Manz, Anand, Joshi and KP Manz 2008, 388). Therefore, to prevent this from occurring. When mistakes have been made, these leaders will often cover up these mistakes with the best of their ability even if it means to do it illegally.

Throughout the drama Chief Kim, the chairman of TQ, Park Hyeondo, has done many bad things for his own benefits while hurting others. As a result, in episode 2, he hired an elite who is specialized in prosecution named Suh Yool to cover up his mistakes. According to Park, the only way for him to win is to bring the devil to his side, the devil was certainly refering to Suh Yool’s incredible ability in his specialization. To be a successful leader of one of the largest chaebol in Korea, one must set up a good example. This person should always take his employees as well as the future of the chaebol into consideration when making decisions and not solely think about their personal benefits. This person should also be a leader who has sight for the future and bring what is the best to his workers. From the example above, due to chairman Park and Suh Yool’s misbehaviours, many of his employees have to taste the poison that they seeded within the company and suffer from unpaid wages, layovers and demotions.

Another example of incident from Chief Kimis that before chairman Park was convicted guilty and before all the secrets were exposed. From the flashback in the final episode, chairman Park assigned Jo Minyeong to hire thugs to kill Chief Lee, who was the only person who knew what chairman Park has done to ruin others’ lives. He thought that simply killing him will erase the truth forever. Similarly, on October, 21, 2018, one of the worst tragedy in Taiwan has killed 18 people due to a disastrous trail derailment. After this incident happened, the executives of Taiwan Railway Administration put enormous pressure on the driver and lied to the public accusing the driver for speeding in order to put the fault on him to ensure their position and reputation.1However, under several investigations, it was found that the cause of derailment was train components malfunction due to the train has not been properly undergo maintenance checkup. The market pressure can lead one company to use unsafe materials to minimize the expense. In order to stop this kind of tragedy from happening, one way is to have government set out strict regulations regarding the this issue (You and Park 2016, 113). This example can be related to the example from drama because the higherup executives tried to remain authorities by avoiding responsibilities and blaming their scapegoats.To conclude, it is sufficient to prove that having a leader that think only for themselves does not provide any bright future to the company but to shut the door to their bright future. A simple minded leader that try to cover up his past of harming people by harming even more people suggests that he has not changed a single bit from the very beginning. He is still thinking only for themselves. Which can ultimately leads to the downfall of the chaebol.

It is shown in studies that if a member have a strong morality then it will be harder for them to be pressured into doing tasks that don’t fit their style of working and the opposite would apply as well (Manz et al 2008, 389). A leader with no morality will certainly bring no future to not only the chaebol itself but everyone within the chaebol.

Betrayal due to jealousy

Why does someone get a better result than someone else when they did not put in as much effort? Why is someone born wealthy while some have to suffer from hunger since birth? Indeed, the world is not fair. Most people have already adapted to this idea of the unfair world and works even harder to achieve a better self. On the other hand, there are some people that simply cannot accept the fact that the world is unfair. Thus, they perform inappropriate, sometimes illegal acts to frame others that they envy just for their own benefits.

Throughout the drama Chief Kim, Park Hyeondo is envy of his wife of being the CEO of TQ and he is only the chairman due to her illness. As shown in the drama, chairman Park and his wife have completely opposite ideas on managing a chaebol. In order to completely take over TQ, chairman Park tried to gain as much control over the chaebol as possible and slowly convincing his employees to follow his order and he even villainize his own wife. From this jealousy of leadership, an individual can use many of the company assets to fight against people on their own side who have contradicting opinions. The money and human resources will clearly be used in the wrong way. Such idiotic behaviour not only does not advance the chaebol value and remain it’s competitiveness in the market but it makes the chaebol to move backward with its net worth decreasing.

A real life example of jealousy get into the way of a chaebol management, thus, resulting in collapse of the company is the jealousy of one brother against his own brother in the fifth largest chaebol in Korea, Lotte Corporation. The older brother Sin Dongju tried to steal over the leadership of Lotte Corporation with help from his relatives.2This action is based on the jealousy of the numerous accomplishment that his younger brother, Sin Dongbin, has done in Korea to bring better lifestyle to Korean population. Sin Dongbin even accused Sin Dongjoo for bribery which sent Sin Dongjoo to a 30 months jail time.3This family feud in the end caused Lotte’s stock to decreased significantly and angered many shareholders and public.

From the two cases above, the chaebol will be corrupted and will be divided by half and most definitely will collapse because the goal of the chaebol is no longer to provide better and more convenient services to Korean citizen while having their employees working under a nice and friendly environment but to earn as much money as possible and frame others for personal benefits regardless of the legality from either the rich or the poor. In conclusion, the cause of such corruption and people suffering all came from the jealous of an individual who drew the sword against his own people.

Gold spoon generation in power

The silver or gold spoon generation is the generation that were born with many privileges(Kim 2017, 844). They were born with wealth and very likely everything that they ever wanted. They were treated with high respect ever since birth because they are known as the son or daughter of a very influential person in the society. Because of this well treatment during their childhood, it shapes who they become after they grew up. They will have different mentality as the others because they assume that everything will go their way and they will encounter no obstacle as they pursue their education or job. This ultimately result in their non-competitive nature to compete in the society. When their wealthy and powerful parents decided to retire at an old age, it is most likely that these gold spoon generation will take over the chaebol. In the end, the chaebol will not do as well as before because the new leader is not capable of their position.

In the early episodes of Chief Kim, the son of the chairman Park and CEO Jang of TQ, Park Myeonsuk was acquired a well-respected position in TQ due to his relationship with the CEO and the chairman. However, he puts in absolutely no effort in his job. All he is doing at work is to mock others and order others to do what was supposed to be his work. This is a perfect example of how a gold spoon individual is able to maintain his position in a chaebol without putting in any effort. His misbehaviour will cause his department to collapse because they do not have a leader who can lead the team to a successful future. His juniors will have to suffer under his horrible leadership, thus, putting more burden on these workers to be required to do more work in order to make the department to stay alive.

Park Myeonsuk not only puts in no effort to work, it is shown that in episode four that he even used TQ’s money on personal entertainment such as clubbing and drinking when he showed up at a funeral with a drunk female. Spending unnecessarily is definitely one of the main reason to corrupt a chaebol. When everyone is working very hard in order to make more money for themselves as well as the chaebol, there is always someone who tries to take advantages from these people especially when they have the ability to order them what to do. One can relate this scenario to a real life example. In a group project, there is always someone who is always slacking and not participate in any aspects of the project. However, in the end, they are granted for something that others worked hard on. In the end, this not only put pressure on others to work harder but the quality of the work will not be as good as if everyone within the team worked together.

Park Myeonsuk from the drama Chief Kimhas demonstrated an example of how a gold spoon generation can manage to bring downfall for both the chaebol and make other employees suffer with his misbehaviours.

Conclusion

To shape Korea into a better country for people to live and work in, one must stop the number of corruptions from increasing within the country. One way to prevent corruption is to have selfless executives who truly care about the growth of the chaebol not someone who is thinking of their own benefits (Lerman 2002, 919). This person should prioritize the future and present of the chaebol more than their own personal profits. Another way is that the government must have strict regulations and harsher punishments to those that failed to maintain their own morality. If these criterias are met, then Korea will becomes somewhere with less corruption and most definitely will be able to attract more people to visit, settle, or invest in the Korea.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Zahra, Afshan. “Speeding blamed for fatal train crash in Taiwan.” Aaj News. Nov. 26, 2018. https://www.aaj.tv/2018/11/speeding-blamed-for-fatal-train-crash-in-taiwan/

2. Sang-Hun, Choe. "'War of Princes' Sows Turmoil at South Korean Conglomerate." The New York Times. Dec. 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/international/south-korean-chaebol-drama-lotte.html.

3. Takahashi, Maiko, and Sohee Kim. "Lotte Chief's Conviction Pushes Family Feud Back Into Spotlight." Bloomberg.com. February 13, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-14/lotte-chief-s-conviction-pushes-family-feud-back-into-spotlight.

Bibliography:

Chief Kim. Directed by Lee Jaehun and Choe Yunsuk . Written by Park Jaebeom. KBS. 2017.

Eom, Boo-Young, and Keun Lee. "Determinants of industry–academy linkages and, their impact on firm performance: The case of Korea as a latecomer in knowledge industrialization."Research Policy39, no. 5 (2010): 625-639.

Gold, Thomas B. "Taiwan in 2008: my kingdom for a horse." Asian Survey49, no. 1 (2009): 88-97.

Kim, Hyejin. "“Spoon Theory” and the Fall of a Populist Princess in Seoul." The Journal of Asian Studies76, no. 4 (2017): 839-49.

Lisa G. Lerman, "The Slippery Slope from Ambition to Greed to Dishonesty: Lawyers, Money, and Professional Integrity," Hofstra Law Review 30, no. 3 (2002): 879-922

Manz, Charles C., Vikas Anand, Mahendra Joshi, and Karen P. Manz. "Emerging paradoxes in executive leadership: A theoretical interpretation of the tensions between corruption and virtuous values." The Leadership Quarterly19, no. 3 (2008): 385-392.

Oh, Ingyu. "From Credible Threats to Credible Commitments? The Changing Face of South Korean Corruption." Elsevier, (2017): 243-51.

Park, Seung-Min. "South Korea’s Comprehensive Security System and Disasters: The Sewol Ferry Tragedy." Korean Journal of Converging Humanities5, no. 1 (2017): 7-30.

Romberg, Alan D. "After the Taiwan election: Restoring dialogue while reserving options." China Leadership Monitor,no. 25 (2008): 1-28.

Sajó, András. "From corruption to extortion: Conceptualization of post-communist corruption." Crime, law and social change 40, no. 2-3 (2003): 171-194.

Sang-Hun, Choe. "'War of Princes' Sows Turmoil at South Korean Conglomerate." The New York Times. Dec. 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/international/south-korean-chaebol-drama-lotte.html.

Takahashi, Maiko, and Sohee Kim. "Lotte Chief's Conviction Pushes Family Feud Back Into Spotlight." Bloomberg.com. February 13, 2018. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-14/lotte-chief-s-conviction-pushes-family-feud-back-into-spotlight. (accessed 12/3/2018)

Zahra, Afshan. “Speeding blamed for fatal train crash in Taiwan.” Aaj News. Nov. 26, 2018. https://www.aaj.tv/2018/11/speeding-blamed-for-fatal-train-crash-in-taiwan/

 
 
 

Recent Posts

See All
Replication of Korean Society

Introduction Chief Kim is a drama about people struggling fighting against their own company from corruption. This drama depicts the dark...

 
 
 

Comments


bottom of page