By This is one of the things I like about Korea is that government ministers are held responsible when bad things happen like with the recent power outage in Korea:
Knowledge Economy Minister Choi Joong-kyung called a press conference yesterday to apologize for the massive nationwide blackouts last week, promising a set of government countermeasures to prevent a recurrence.
But Choi defied expectations that he would resign to take responsibility. Some Blue House officials said they believe he will step down after cleaning up the technical and political mess left in the wake of the blackouts.
“As head of the ministry in charge, I am taking responsibility indefinitely at this time,” Choi said at a televised conference.
“Doing my best to come up with measures to prevent a recurrence and finding out what went wrong, and not just clinging to my seat, is what I think is the proper thing for me to do as a public servant.”
The Thursday-afternoon blackouts affected the country on an unprecedented scale, pulling the plugs on homes of more than 1.62 million families for around five hours, providing fresh antigovernment ammunition for the opposition ahead of next year’s general and presidential elections.
“Minister Choi delivered the same remarks to the presidential chief of staff, Yim Tae-hee, and the Blue House regards it as an intention to resign,” said a high-ranking official of the presidential office.
Another senior Blue House official said Choi will step down after dealing with the aftermath of the blackouts, as an agriculture minister did earlier this year. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
In the US government very rarely is anyone held accountable. For example does anyone think the Secretary of Energy or White House will be held accountable for the Solyndra Scandal?
8:25 pm on September 19th, 2011 1
Headline: “Minister To Resign”
Article : “But Choi defied expectations that he would resign”
Am I the only rational person with a working bullshyt filter in the entire world?
11:05 pm on September 19th, 2011 2
GI,
Don’t be naive. Government ministers are, in South Korea more so than anywhere else, figureheads whose sole role is to take one for the team when public opinion turns against the government.
12:34 am on September 20th, 2011 3
Senior people in Korean organizations are HELD accountable.
Example. Remember the first recall of current Hyundai Sonata model currently being sold? It had to do something with door not working if you tried to open it WHILE the car was in motion. Stupid of someone to try but it did result in recall. Guess whose head rolled? The head of the Hyundai Motor Factory (Korean employee from Korea) in Alabama was let go. Not sure if he was fired or recalled back to Korea, but he was booted from the position.
A few MONTHS later, his replacement (another Korean employee from Korea) was ALSO booted. His sin? He couldn’t open the hood of Sonata on display during a tour of the factory by the head of the Hyundai Motor Corporation. It was assumed he was not worthy of the position (overall in charge of the entire factory, aka 공장장) if he didn’t know a little detail of a product made at the factory.
Ruthless? Yes. I would hate to work in such place. But things get done.
1:11 am on September 20th, 2011 4
#3,
It has nothing to do with senior people being held accountable. Ministers are figureheads and expendable. The ones who handle things, and are directly accountable to the president and not the ministers, are the deputy ministers. Just compare the salaries of a deputy minister and that of a minister and you’ll understand.
2:38 am on September 20th, 2011 5
All this bullpucky about “being let go” … “forced to resign” … and “HELD accountable,” etc.
It’s nothing more than a smokescreen in most Asian countries.
In other words – the person resigning or being let go doesn’t actually feel any significant pain or public humiliation. And perhaps more important – at least on a personal level – they rarely feel it in the wallet.
Whereas in America – if you get shyt canned – you don’t quietly move to another position of equal pay and/or responsibility within the organization. But that’s typically what happens in most of Asia – and especially in Korea.
5:50 am on September 20th, 2011 6
@1 – If you read the full article it says the Blue House expects this guy to resign. What is going on is that this guy doesn’t think he should resign and the Blue House is saying that he will resign because someone has to be held responsible even if he didn’t directly cause the problem.
1:22 pm on September 20th, 2011 7
GI Korea,
Here is a trend you may not have noticed… but you should be aware of.
In today’s information-overload Internet society, many people just read the headlines.
Government and media are aware of this… so they make a headline that has NOTHING to do with reality… and everything to do with whatever agenda they are pushing.
People read the headline and then informally spread an alternate version of reality based on soundbites… such as this guy resigned in a sudden burst of accountability.
In reality, he made it clear that he is going to stick around and “fix the problem”… at which point such a problem-solver will likely not be asked to resign. As long as he has no real enemies, nothing will happen… as the incident is already forgotten by the public.
This tactic is becoming more common… and it is used for every nefarious reason from promising nonexistent government and corporate action to misrepresenting unfavored politicians to pushing the imaginary scourge of Global Warming.
…you might remember that Glans posted a link in which the headlines read something like “Global Warming’s Rising Sea Threatens to Flood Town”… while the article clearly stated that the town had been built on landfill and was sinking. Then the Warmers wanted to continue arguing about the rising sea level even though the article in no way supported anything about it.
So the drones just read the nonsense headline and repeat it as if it were fact… supporting it with vague memes and other pop misrepresentations in a growing accumulation of informational drek and emotion-tinged generalizations that passes for knowledge.
In this case, the minister may resign… but I will believe it when I see it… and you are certainly encouraged to point it out when it happens.
Nonetheless… concerning your statements on accountability…
While there may or may not be accountability of some sort in Korea, there certainly is none in America.
The head of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, broke some of the most seriously-enforced laws in America, sold guns to violent Mexican drug criminals with no real plan, got a couple of federal agents killed, tried to cover it all up, resisted calls to resign… and got reassigned to a cushy job as senior adviser on forensic science at the Justice Department’s headquarters.
…while the bulllshyt headlines all screamed about “American Guns Being Used in Mexican Crimes”… which certain Canadians indignantly repeated as fact.