As a “vertical” change of government is now taking place in Korea with power being transferred within the same party, change of policies cannot be too phenomenal. The eyes and ears of the nation are drawn to the names of people who will lead the country together with the new president.

The transition period is a great time for voyeurism. All sorts of personal matters of the appointees are exposed not only to the National Assemblymen in confirmation hearings but for the whole nation anxious to make their own judgment. Koreans suddenly become highly moralistic, patriotic and even sadistic. People who have not served with the Army themselves tend to be quite vocal in their disapproval of a nominee who has a son or two “exempted” from the compulsory military service duty for one reason or another.

President-elect Park Geun-hye’s first nominee for prime minister withdrew from the confirmation process after the media reported his two sons’ exclusion from conscription more than two decades ago, along with his substantial wealth. The next nominee, Chung Hong-won who himself had completed the Army duty, must still not be too comfortable as his son had been spared from military service because of a spinal problem, after he received induction deferments for a few years.

The fusses over some early nominees for the Park administration remind me of my own experience when I was appointed to a government post in the late 1990s. I served as the director of the Korea Information Service ― now the Korean Overseas Culture and Information Service under the wing of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ― from 1999 through 2002 after retiring from my newspaper job. Soon after I took the office, an online newspaper carried a list of ranking government officials who had children exempted from military duty. I was an assistant minister-level recruit but my name was honorably on the list of mostly ministers and vice ministers.

Next to my name were my second son’s name and the medical term of his disease, for which he was given the disqualification order. It did not mention that my first son and I had both completed active service with the Republic of Korea Army. My younger son had not known that he had a weak heart until he applied for the Reserve Officers Training Corps at his university. After he scored low on the physical fitness test, he checked his heart and was diagnosed with cardiac insufficiency.

The online article was about what the reporter determined the high percentage of high-ranking officials who had their children rejected from military service. There was little I could do about it although I felt it unfair that the report conveniently ignored the fact that two of the three men in my family had fulfilled the national duty. I assumed that the list included many others who were in a situation like mine.

Last week, lawyer Lee Dong-heub also withdrew from his nomination as head of the Constitutional Court after the exposure of his personal finances, including his allegedly private use of a “special activities allowance” that amounted to some 300 million won over six years. I have never met him, but his case also brought up my memory of the three-year government service.

Before I reported to the new job, the general affairs chief of the KIS (now KOCIS) came to see me to explain what remuneration I could expect. The payment consisted of the basic salary, the fixed amount expenses for the operation of the official car, and an item called “beginning of the month allowance (wolcho gyeongbi).” The general affairs head told me that the third item, which is separately released on the first of every month, was “for personal use.” Then he advised me that part of the money may be used for various office expenses.

Those “wolcho” allowances were being paid to public servants in different amounts corresponding to their ranks. About the staggered system of payment, my colleagues joked that it was designed to allow them free expenditures without the interference, or even knowledge, of their spouses. In my case, it amounted to about one-quarter of the whole monthly payment. I could be mistaken but I now suspect that the controversial special activities allowances given to Lee Dong-heub were of the similar nature as the “wolcho” money for administration officials.

I do not believe that Lee was the only one among the nine Constitutional Court judges to have considered the special allowances as supplementary salary for private expenses. Others in the ranking positions of the court, administration and legislature must be given similarly obscure items of payment and surely are following established practices like Lee. This rather complex payment system for public officials was the creation of bureaucratic ingenuity aimed to close the gap in pecuniary rewards between the government and private sectors.

Koreans have lived through the post-war decades with generally compromised moral standards, pursuing expediencies, tolerating corruption and emulating each other. Young students of law legally had their conscription deferred year after year during college and then illegally evaded it once or twice until they finally passed the state exam and became eligible to serve as law officers in the Army. This may explain why our esteemed legal professionals are not so strict about the military service of their own children.

People had little compunction about making false resident registration in order to apply for apartment purchase or get their children allotted to a “good” school district. President Lee Myung-bak admitted he had committed the falsity five times for the latter purpose. Scholars established and followed their own standards on plagiarism while generously not bothering to check others’ research papers. So why do we all become such great moralists during the confirmation hearings season only? Perhaps because it helps them taste some catharsis from the banality of social decay in today’s Republic of Korea.

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer of The Korea Herald. ― Ed.