White Envelope
Giles Ryan
©
Copyright 2023 by Giles Ryan
|
Photo by Richard Loller. |
It’s
a delicate business, paying a bribe. Unlike other transactions, the
amount you’re expected to pay may be unstated, no more than an
estimate, but whatever you pay must be enough, and yet you certainly
don’t want to pay too much, for that might spoil the market for
others. And the thing must be done properly, so as to leave no ill
feeling on either side. It takes a deft hand, and it’s not a
situation that allows for gaucherie.
In
the summer of 1984, I was managing the Seoul branch of an American
company when our Seattle head office decided to transfer me to Tokyo,
a serious uprooting for me and my wife and our two year old boy. Our
recent few years in Seoul had resulted in the accumulation of more
furnishings than my bachelor days ever knew, and it would take a
moving company to pack it up and a shipping container to hold it all.
The head office would cover the cost, (and why not? — this
transfer wasn’t my idea), but it was all sudden and
disconcerting. In any event, on the appointed day the movers took
everything in hand while my family and I went to the Hilton Hotel for
the last days before departure.
Mr.
Kang from the office handled most of the arrangements, but then he
told me that I must attend the final customs inspection and sign some
documents before the shipment could move on. There was some
hesitation in his manner, but we had worked together for a long time,
so I could sense something was amiss. Besides, he had mentioned a
customs inspector, and in those days their ways were well known, so I
could guess the problem. Moreover, our daily work involved auditing
the shipping lines in the major freight pricing cartels, so we had
both seen some startling things. Shipping and the maritime business
are not too many generations removed from piracy, and experience had
taught me that the waterfronts of the world are their own domain with
their own rules.
“Right.
How much?” I asked, going straight to the point.
“A
hundred thousand wŏn”
said Mr. Kang. This was a bit more than pocket change but not really
exorbitant — it was about what I would have guessed. But he was
surprised when I said I would pay this. No, no, not at all, he
insisted the company should pay it, this was the usual thing. After
all, moving to Tokyo was a company transfer.
And
then I understood why he was telling me about this — not
because I should bear the cost, but because he wanted me to hand it
over in person. Of course, I thought, he doesn’t want to be in
the middle, and although I had complete confidence in his honesty, I
understood he didn’t want to be in a situation where there
could be the slightest doubt that the entire amount was being passed
on.
“Oh
yes, of course,” I said, “we’ll go together and
I’ll handle this.”
The
next morning, a bright sunny day with a pure blue sky above, we went
to a bonded container depot on the outskirts of Seoul and met the
customs inspector at the appointed time. He was standing by the rear
of a shipping container mounted on a wheeled chassis, and the
container had already been sealed, indicating it had already been
inspected, or at least nominally so.
The
customs inspector was clearly surprised to see me, and he gave Mr.
Kang a questioning look, but my colleague simply introduced me and
stated the obvious, that I was the owner of the cargo and had come
along to sign the necessary papers. I made some small talk — a
beautiful day, yes? I suppose everything is in order, right? And do
you have the forms for me to sign? — and with this I pointed to
his clipboard.
But
his eyes were on my other hand, which held a white envelope, which in
the circumstances could only mean one thing. He gave Mr. Kang a look
of complete surprise, which told me the fellow had never done this
with an American. Mr. Kang just smiled as if this were the usual
thing, (clearly he was enjoying the scene.) The deed itself was
simple enough, but these things have their own punctilio. No one
speaks of payment or refers to it directly; you may look the other
fellow in the eye but you never stare, you may smile but do so
sincerely, with no hint of censure. And the cash must be in a white
envelope. My previous experience had been in Bangladesh and Thailand,
where hard cash on a soft palm would never offend anyone, but in
Korea, a douceur required a veneer
of subtlety.
The
inspector passed me the clipboard, explaining that I should sign the
places marked, and with his other hand he reached for the envelope
and quickly moved it to his coat pocket with the dexterity that comes
only from long practice. There was no receipt, (there never is), but
back in the office we’d gin something up. Our business done, we
bid him farewell and went on our way. A few weeks later, everything
was delivered intact to our new home in Tokyo.
Well,
now..... anyone may look at these lines and wonder, How could I do
something so terrible? How could I speak of it so lightly when the
thing itself was clearly wrong? But anyone offended by all this would
perhaps be someone who has not lived so much in the wider world. Any
hasty judgement overlooks the blunt truth that no one ever willingly
paid a bribe. By its very nature, the transaction is compelled. In
this instance, the only alternative was to see our family possessions
— of no high price perhaps but of great value to us —
held up interminably in a state of uncertainty or, worst case, simply
vanish. Certainly I paid up.
And
I put the whole matter behind me. Of course, this was long ago, in a
time when Korea had a military dictator in Chun Doo-hwan, and
corruption was the norm. Today, Korea is a different country, far
more democratic than the U.S., (systematic voter suppression is
unknown in Korea), and while there may still be irregularities, any
contemporary corruption is constrained; indeed, Korean politicos
these days run the undeniable risk of ending up in prison, and more
than a few have done so. Corruption is far worse in Russia or
the United States, where, in effect, it has state sanction; in Russia
this takes the form of a police state where any importunate reformers
may be killed on the street — indeed, even on a street in
another country — while in the United States, corruption is
conducted under cover of campaign finance laws confirmed by courts
suborned by a political class funded by the corporations who reap the
benefits. In both countries, the result is essentially the same,
a de
facto oligarchy.
But
the scale of corruption calls out for comparison. The small bribery I
describe above — the petit mal corruption
of
the bureaucrats and state hirelings with their small tasks of limited
scope — is just that, petty, trivial and altogether
circumscribed in its impact when compared to the grand
mal malfeasance of the Russian and American
oligarchs. For
corruption on a grand scale always — always —
gives the greatest advantage to a narrow, select group at the
pinnacle of society, a group which includes both the givers and the
takers. These people find every way, every specious twist of logic to
justify the abandonment of principle in pursuit of what they do.
But
of course the oligarchs’ grand corruption cannot be truly
compared to the bureaucrat supplementing his salary with the
occasional sweetener. Aside from the difference in scale, which is
enormous — indeed, of a wholly different dimension —
there is the matter of method, what we may call the atmospherics of
the thing.
The bribe paid to some government apparatchik in
whatever country is typically a private encounter, played pianissimo.
But the oligarch’s bribe, for both giver and taker, occurs on a
grand stage and demands a much wider world, where both sides have
their multiple intermediaries, with lawyers at hand, giving cover
each step along the way, to say nothing of the vast sums flowing from
account to account, imperceptibly cleaner with each shift, and all of
this occurring in mysterious off-shore banks on far away
isles.
Oh,
no, the oligarchs’ corruption is worlds away and on an epic
scale of sin with a cinematic cast of sinners. It is far, far beyond
the scope of any white envelope.
(Unless
you
type
the
author's name
in
the subject
line
of the message
we
won't know where to send it.)
Giles
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