[Editorial] Lessons Learned From Good Morning City Bribery Scandal

An investigation file lay hidden in the drawer of the prosecutor`s office for almost one year. The recently uncovered document related to the bribery scandal involving Good Morning City, the company that runs a shopping mall with the same name. The "Good Morning City scandal" has now drawn considerable attention from all quarters. As in most bribery scandals, this case involves an astronomical amount of bribes to buy politicians, unbelievable development and advances of a company, and suspicious and unreasonable disruption in the prosecution`s task ahead. Unlike other cases, however, this scandal produced more than 3,000 innocent victims.

President of Good Morning City, Yoon Chang-yul established the company with his own fund of 50 million won (or, approximately $42,000) and a 1.95-billion loan from private money lenders. Even with the unknown cases excluded, he has reportedly embezzled more than 35 billion won.

Common sense makes us question how he raised the 500 billion fund and acquired a company worth more than 260 billion won. All these circumstances indicate that criminal elements lay in each and every move he made. We can further infer that he could not cover up all these dirty dealings without special favors from politicians.

It has already been found that Millennium Democratic Party leader Chung Dae-chul and other Millennium Democrats received millions from Yoon. All the MDP representatives involved argue that they took the money as political donations and issued receipts. This bring us to the conclusion that there were no legal problems. The real problem is not about legality. The politicians may have indeed used the money for some other purpose. However, the key element of bribery is whether receipt of money was made in return for some illegitimate and illegal favors. That is what is applicable to the case. Yoon at the arraignment hearing stated that he gave the money to the MDP in return for favors related to the investment. Therefore, it realy does not matter whether these certain politicians granted any favors to Yoon.

Numerous innocent victims were cheated out of their money. That is why a more thorough investigation should be made. Moreover, the leader of the ruling party in Korea played a major role in the scandal. Simply we want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We, as citizens, will closely watch how the prosecution handles the case. We still remember their announcement to crack down on bribery cases involving politicians.

Politicians we hope, have learned a serious lesson from this. They should stop the practice of taking any money in the name of donations, from whatever source.