S Korea’s whistleblowers sound off at own risk
FIVE years ago, South Koreans began calling a number in Britain in droves. They were trying to sway an international phone poll to name Jeju Island in South Korea one of the “new seven wonders of nature”.
South Koreans, from thenpresident Lee Myung-bak to schoolchildren, pitched in. On Jeju Island alone, government officials voted up to 2 million times a day on their office phones, generating $20.3 million in phone bills.
But Lee Hae-gwan smelled something fishy. Lee, a union leader at South Korean’s main telephone company, heard from fellow workers that their employer was handling the calls locally, even as it charged South Koreans millions for calling Britain.
Lee Hae-gwan blew the whistle – and paid for it. Over the past four years he has endured a suspension, a transfer, a pay cut and being fired. All, he says, the result of his whistleblowing.
His plight – which ended only this year, when he won his job back – demonstrates why South Korea is having trouble getting inside executives and officials to call out wrongdoing, despite a push to uproot corruption.
“I would do it again,” Lee Hae-gwan said. “But if my children or friends ask me what to do in the same situation, I would not encourage them to do as I did. You pay too big a price.”
Corruption is becoming a pressing issue in South Korea as economic growth slows and its people begin to demand higher standards from their leaders and big companies. After a string of corruption scandals that implicated prosecutors and judges, opposition parties are calling for the establishment of an independent agency to investigate graft among senior public servants.
A new law went into effect in September that, among other things, bans public servants, schoolteachers and journalists from getting free meals worth more than $27 to prevent conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, prosecutors are increasingly examining the conduct of corporate executives.
Crucial to those efforts, say supporters, is empowering whistleblowers. Already the government encourages tattling by camera-toting bounty hunters who collect evidence of petty crimes as well as serious infractions like bribery. The Horuragi Foundation, a civic group, and others are lobbying parliament to extend coverage from current whistleblower protection laws, which are not as broad as in the United States and elsewhere.
But the groups expect progress to be slow because of broad political gridlock as well as entrenched attitudes toward whistleblowers, especially among government officials and corporate executives.
“They do whatever it takes to find an excuse to expel whistleblowers,” said Lee Young-kee, a lawyer who heads the Horuragi Foundation.
South Korea’s past military dictatorship spawned a rigidly hierarchical office culture that made whistleblowing difficult. With “loyalty to the organisation” upheld as a key value, whistleblowing was seen as an act of betrayal. Rules were routinely ignored in the name of meeting management goals, but few spoke out against colleagues because life in the office revolved around hometown, family and school connections, reinforced through nepotism and late-night wining and dining.
In its 2013 survey of 42 whistleblowers, the Horuragi Foundation found that 60 percent were fired after exposing corruption in their organisations. Whistleblowers reported financial straits, divorces and suicidal impulses as they were ostracised by their colleagues and harassed with defamation and other lawsuits from managers. Their names were blacklisted, making it hard to find jobs in their profession, the survey said.