[Editorial] Cascade of Money into Roh Camp after Presidential Race

An arrest warrant has been issued against Yeo Taik-soo, one of President Roh’s closest aides and the administrator of the first annex of the presidential office, for 300 million won in illicit political funds which he received from the Lotte Group. Some circumstantial evidence reportedly suggests that Ahn Hee-jung, who is in prison for separate corruption charges, and Choi Do-sul, the president’s aide, are implicated in the Lotte scandal.

We cannot help getting angered and frustrated as allegations that a cascade of money flowed into the president’s entourages’ personal coffers are increasingly being confirmed as fact. If key players of the regime which holds morality as their supreme and distinct value, collected illicit funds through the back-door as soon as they won the elections, it would be a very significant issue, of which the outcome may shake the raison d’ etre of the regime.

It has been the worst-kept secret that president-elects and their entourages usually collect rewards for their electoral victory from corporations in a “privy chamber.” Its high probability was confirmed during the probes into the scandal involving the conversion of the National Intelligence Agency’s secret funds into campaign funds of the ruling party candidate in the 1997 presidential elections.

As corporate contribution to slush funds for the presidential race to buying insurance, rewards for electoral victory is to briberies underlying the corruption at the core of political power. To borrow President Roh’s political grammar, slush funds for the primaries are second grade, slush funds for the presidential elections are the third, and the rewards are the junk grade. This is why the prosecution must thoroughly investigate to find out the final destination of the rewards, and how they were spent. If probes into electoral slush funds are about to end, investigations into the rewards have just begun. Since there is no reason for corporations to give consolidation rewards to losers in the elections, the issue of prosecution impartiality won’t surface.

In addition, politicians should put an institutional system in place to clarify the legal rights and limitations of the president-elect and to transparently monitor him and his allies in order to preempt “the rewards.”