[영어 에세이] A Country where chaebol are good to live in, South Korea

A Country where chaebol are good to live in, South Korea

 

On March 10, 2017 something big thing happened in Korea. Citizens impeached the president. The citizens angry with the president went out to the square with candles. Eventually, the Constitutional court impeached the president. Not a single drop of blood, in a 100% democracy way. 

However, on February 5, 2018, something even bigger happened. The court acquitted Samsung Electronics Vice chairman Lee Jae-Yong. Lee Jae-Yong and Park Geun-Hye made collusion between politics and business. Park was 25-years in prison. In contrast, Lee was acquitted. This is because Lee’s economic power and power to dominate public opinion is much more than Park’s. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that Samsung controls this country. So when we feel something problem, we blame Samsung and Chaebol often. Some people argue that Chaebols are unfairly criticized in South Korea. But I think we`re pushing the chaebol too lenient. We need to impose stricter moral standards on chaebol, monitor and criticize them. I will argue this perspective for the following reasons which I am going to elaborate. I will use article number 2 because that article has some statistical basis, article 3 for the exact definition of chaebol and article 4 for an appropriate example.

To begin with, chaebol has never been punished properly, For example, Lee Kun-hee, the Samsung group chairman, was convicted in 1996 of bribing politician and sentenced to two years in prison. The prison sentence was overturned and he was pardoned the following year. In 2008, he was convicted of tax evasion, but three-year prison sentence was suspended and he was ordered to pay 110 billion won ($93 million) instead. (PhamSherisse, 2017) As we can see, chaebol is punished relatively unscathed for their crimes. SK chairman Chey Tae-won was convicted of embezzlement in 2013 and spent about two years in prison, one of the longest sentences served by a chaebol leader. (PhamSherisse, 2017) Can you believe only two years is the longest sentences served by chaebol? There is seriously something wrong in this situation.

On top of that, Chaebol dominates for so long time. The word "chaebol” comes from the combination of the characters for “rich” and “clan.” It applies to large groups of interconnected companies that are usually dominated by a wealthy family. (TejadaCarlos, 2017) Chaebol is not a single person, which is family. The president or congressman has a fixed term. But the chaebol has no fixed term. When the chairman dies, the son inherits the group. Take Samsung group, for instance, vice chairman Lee Jae-Yong is already a third generation succession. Usually, we criticize North Korea because of their power succession. But there is no one to criticize Samsung for the same reason. So now, Samsung group are responsible for 41% of the nation`s economy and Chaebol are responsible 77% (AlbertEleanor, 2018). Tons of small citizens are competing with the chaebol. They cannot win if chaebol competes on a huge amount of capital.

To sum up, Chaebol has never been punished properly and have too much power for a long time. For this reasons, I claim that we have to criticize chaebol more and must be closely watched for anything they are doing wrong.