Overcoming Korea’s founder’s syndrome
Many organizations experience the founder’s syndrome, in which a charismatic founder establishes a successful company on the power of his personality but ultimately becomes an impediment to the growth of the organization because of his need to remain in absolute control or misuse of the organization for personal gain. Most often, accountability and transparency are subverted by the founder himself through the use of nepotism, abusive leadership, and demands for personal loyalty that rivals those reserved for religious cults. Unless the founder’s syndrome can be overcome, it will prove to be lethal to the long-term health of the organization; most of the time, it doesn’t turn out too well for the founder himself either.
Unfortunately, Korea is a nation of founders and suffers acutely from this syndrome.
Although Syngman Rhee was the inaugural president of the fledgling country in the aftermath of the Korean War, Park Chung-hee was really the founder of the modern Korean nation, revered for his strong military-style leadership in guiding the impoverished and chaotic country through the Miracle on the Han River. Unfortunately, Park suffered from the founder’s syndrome and ran roughshod over the Constitution to remain in power as a dictator until he was assassinated by his own KCIA chief in 1979.
Following Park, Chun Doo-hwan tried to follow suit but was pushed out by the huge democratic movement of the 1980s. Even with the restoration of democracy, however, Korea’s politics have been driven by charismatic personalities who would construct and de-construct political parties around their persons to facilitate a political end. The three Kims come easily to mind.
Economy is no exception. Of the 400 richest people in the world, five are from South Korea. According to Chosun, “Koreans on the list are all children or grandchildren of the founders of big conglomerates — Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, Amore Pacific Chairman Suh Kyung-bae, Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Chairman Chung Mong-koo and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won.” Similar pattern holds even if you expand the list to include more. Very few of them are self-made but inherited their wealth from the legendary founders of their respective conglomerates, many going on three generations.
This isn’t necessarily bad if it was only a matter of wealth transfer. However, it almost always involves some scheme to hand down the reins of corporate power to the next generation of the founding family without regard to corporate accountability or transparency. Keep in mind that these are public companies whose primary responsibility should be to the stockholders. But we have seen — through their history and actions — that their primary responsibilities lay in furthering the position and control of select members of the founding family.
It’s important to note that the founder’s syndrome affects not only the original leader but the followers themselves. Their symptoms are even more dangerous since it’s the follower’s passive consent or even active participation that enables the leader to wallow in founder’s syndrome and allow the organization to lose its way.
Park Geun-hye’s election as the president four years ago was an extension of the founder’s syndrome of her father that many Koreans suffered. Many projected her father’s charisma and leadership onto Park’s person — something she actively cultivated as well — and voted for her with a sense of nostalgia for the time in which they experienced the greatest growth and social meaning in the headlong drive to industrialization.
Unfortunately, what got you here won’t get you there. And today’s Park wasn’t yesterday’s Park in the most critical sense.
Park’s impeachment is certainly a victory for Korea’s democracy and rule of law. However, the founder’s syndrome that’s ingrained across many aspects of Korean society has not gone away. Korean culture tends to imbue authority and legitimacy onto those associated with the founders by blood, rather than have them prove themselves through performance and record of delivery.
Ultimately, it’s the culture that defines the vibrancy and sustainability of a country’s democracy, not merely its institutions and laws. And culture is shaped by key examples and events. Today’s America would not have happened if George Washington had not voluntarily resigned from his military commission and stepped down from the office of the presidency after his two terms, despite being asked to stay on by some as de facto king. It was his decision, more than the noble and inspirational phrases of the written constitution that ingrained into the American culture what a republic is all about.
Perhaps Park’s impeachment can serve a similar purpose for Korea’s culture of democracy. Jason Lim is a Washington D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.