Of the many news reports last week, the following three items were particularly painful:
The launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 was postponed indefinitely due to a glitch in the fuel system. It was the third attempt to put a satellite into earth’s orbit after two failures in 2009 and 2010, the first a malfunction of the fairing device and the second a mid-air explosion because of a still unknown cause.
Suh Nam-pyo announced he would resign as KAIST president in February 2013, a year and a half before the end of his second four-year term. The decision concluded a drawn-out feud between the Korean-born MIT scholar and professors at Korea’s leading research university over his innovation programs.
Lee Si-hyung, the only son of President Lee Myung-bak, was questioned by an independent counsel investigating improprieties in the Lee family’s purchase of a property in Seoul to build a retirement residence for the president. The president’s elder brother and his wife will also be summoned by the special prosecutor appointed by the National Assembly.
Each of the above reminded me of how distanced the Republic of Korea is from a globally respectable position that we mistakenly believe we have almost reached.
For one, the Suh Nam-pyo dispute brings shame to KAIST, its faculty and students, the whole science-tech community in this country and whoever yearns for Korea’s global prominence. Suh, 76, stayed at KAIST much longer than his predecessor, Robert Laughlin, a Nobel Prize prize winner in physics who was loaned from Stanford University, but shared more or less the same fate.
Laughlin was invited to lead innovation of the state-run university and elevate it to a world-class institution that can produce Nobel laureates. After two years of reform experiments, Laughlin called it quits, unable to withstand repercussions from professors.
Everyone is sorry about what happened to KAIST, which had become a symbol of reform in Korean universities with wide media exposure. But the reform process, which was emulated by many other institutions, has apparently been halted at KAIST: tuition is no longer directly linked to academic scores, English-only lectures have become optional and, most importantly, professors now expect more generous tenure track selection procedures.
Now, one can easily predict that no more scholars with foreign credentials will be invited to lead KAIST. If offered the job with millions of dollars in salary, few from outside the country would accept it. Guus Hiddink changed the climate of Korean soccer with 20-odd national players, but both Laughlin and Suh failed with some 800 professors at KAIST who had tens of thousands of reform-resistant supporters outside the campus.
We Koreans are generally sensitive of international appraisal of where we stand. It may be attributed to the nation’s long history of insignificant existence between the two bigger neighbors of China and Japan. As the nation rose from obscurity in recent decades with its growing economy, Korea’s place in various kinds of global rankings have had a strong impact on the national psyche.
The media is particularly kind to report changes in the international indices measured about industrial performances, bureaucratic transparency, management efficiency and academic achievements. When the Times-QS World University Rankings 2012 placed KAIST 63rd, a remarkable leap from 198th in 2006, students and faculty were pleased, but they would not endure the rigors of the innovation that apparently raised the ranking.
Korean sagas on the world stage this year made people happy. The Korean contingent to the London Summer Olympics had their national anthem played 13 times to place the nation in 5th place out of the total 204 delegations. Young Korean entertainers or K-pop stars have seen rapidly increasing popularity not only in Asia but in Europe and the Americas. At last, the stunning success of “Gangnam Style” made Korean rapper Psy a household name across the world.
If the KSLV-1 had soared to the sky last Oct. 26 and put a scientific satellite into orbit, South Korea would have won the distinction of being the 10th country in the world to achieve the feat. But we now have to continue a painful wait, probably until next year, while Russian engineers wrestle with the defective part of the rocket they built.
It is doubly depressing for South Koreans to note that the despised rival North Korea launched a space rocket in 2009, although its second attempt to place the “Kwangmyongsong” satellite into orbit failed in April this year. Pyongyang test-fired the Daepodong long-range missiles in 1998 and 2006 in defiance of international warnings.
Technological distance can be narrowed with concentrated research efforts and investment. Having conquered the automobile, ship, TV and smart phone markets of the world, Koreans are confident that they will in the near future see the magnificent liftoff of a huge white rocket at Naro Space Center on the south coast and hear the signals sent from the Naro Science Satellite. Now, what about the property deal involving the presidential family?
The independent counsel is probing the deal made last year to purchase several plots of land in Naegok-dong to build the president’s retirement house in the name of his son. A lower price was paid for the family’s portion than the adjoining land to be used by the retired president’s bodyguards. Also under scrutiny is the way Si-hyung secured the money for the purchase, about half of which was allegedly loaned by NH Bank and the rest borrowed from the president’s elder brother.
President Lee has stressed the importance of “gukgyeok,” meaning something like national prestige or national standing, that goes up with combined effect of the economic, cultural and moral strength of a nation. He expressed satisfaction when Korea was recently elected as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and Songdo district in Incheon was chosen as the site for the U.N. Global Climate Fund secretariat as he believed these events proved Korea’s elevated gukgyeok.
However, he has to explain if this country can still claim a position of global respect when even the presidential family shuns the normal bank wire transfer for a personal loan from the president’s brother to his nephew. It turned out that the brother’s wife personally delivered half a million dollars’ worth of cash to Lee Si-hyung to help him pay for the controversial property. People now question the role of the president in this disturbing affair.
Korea has taken a great leap forward and upward for economic and political development. But, there is still simply a long way to go on the path to achieving what I would call national integrity. Robert Laughlin and Suh Nam-pyo are among the names that remind us of the distance to cover.
By Kim Myong-sik
Kim Myong-sik, former managing editor of The Korea Times, has written editorials for The Korea Herald for over 10 years. ― Ed.
