1. After the country celebrated its first female leader when Park Geun-hye became President in February 2013, she was removed from office in March 2017 for corruption. <\/p>\n
2. While South Korea ranks in the upper-third of Transparency Internationals 2016 Corruption Perception Index, it does not stack up well with its peer group. <\/p>\n
3. Among the 35 OECD developed economies, just six countries rank worse than South Korea: Mexico, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. Most of them are economically less advanced than South Korea. <\/p>\n
4. Moreover, 50% of South Koreans polled said corruption had increased recently an unsurprising sentiment amid the far-reaching presidential scandal. <\/p>\n
5. A key factor in this perception of corruption is the dominant role of the chaebols the large, often family-owned and family-run industrial conglomerates in South Korea. <\/p>\n
6. It is not by accident that the countrys largest industrial group, Samsung, finds itself at the center of the corruption charges that led to the ouster of President Park. <\/p>\n
7. The chaebols dominance over the South Korean economy and the high level of business concentration that this represents create a dangerous chokehold over the economy and politics. <\/p>\n
8. Moreover, as the unfolding of the recent corruption scandal generated a lot of government backlash to reporting on it, South Korea dropped 10 places between 2015 and 2016 in the global rankings on media freedom. <\/p>\n
9. South Korea has long struggled with press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders, which ranked it 70th in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index. <\/p>\n
10. One reason is that the country has laws on the books that allow imprisonment for defamatory or pro-North Korean reporting. Both often prompt self-censorship among journalists. <\/p>\n
Sources: The Globalist Research Center, Transparency International, Reporters Without Borders and New York Times <\/p>\n
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\nSouth Korea: Corruption & Self-Censorship - The Globalist<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"