The Trial of a Flim-Flam Man

The Trial of a Flimflam Man
February 25 2003

“If DJ Kim is not guilty of Fraud and Grand Theft, no one is, as if Henry Kissinger is not guilty yet of war crime.”

With somewhat subdued mood and a whiff of ignominy, and largely ignored by the mainstream media in Seoul, DJ Kim, the outgoing president of the Republic of Korea has quietly and shamelessly sashayed, riding on the Presidential limousine, into the luxurious palace of his retirement residence that was built with 3 billion Won, a brand-new 7-room, 8-bathroom, and a sunken garden mansion.

In his farewell to the nation, Mr. Kim again showed the typically unabashed arrogance and imprudence of a flimflam man to the Korean people that he still believes that his Nobel-Prize-winning “Sunshine Policy” was the key achievement of his regime and the presence of the USFK is needed in South Korea not only now, but also any future national unification.
In addition, he refused to reflect what reality the Korean people are facing today after a five-year of his hanky-panky financial mismanagement has brought forth to the nation that resulted in the incarceration of his own sons among other things.

The Korean people were utterly duped in Kim’s legacy-building business of the national unification, a pipe-dream that people were aahing, oohing, dancing, and holding each other in the street when he declared, returning from the North-South Summit meeting years ago, that he brought the peace to the Korean peninsular as if a peace is a marketable commodity he fetched from the North as a Santa Claus.

And amazingly and ghastly to many thoughtful men, the vox populi around the world accepted him a peacemaker and Nobel awarded him a Peace Prize with a cool amount of one million dollar US.
He convinced the South Korean people, as a flimflam man sells a bottle of snake-oil for a cure-all medicine, that his policy toward the North Korea could be engaged successfully while the USFK in Korea maintain its presence in the peninsular even after the national unification…a cockamamie and dopey policy that only sickly and desperado Koreans swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

Did he, then, believe himself really and faithfully that his Sunshine Policy would bring peace and stability in Korea?
In his political career, in which he valued mostly the principle of the Machiavellian virtues by a flimflam man: he believed that politics constitute the art of deceit which, if practiced wisely, may lead to victory and become a morality of the day.
In other words, as Machiavelli sanctions fraud when it is necessary for the well-being of the polis, he values more with result than virtue: a policy is defined not by its excellence but by its outcome. (He, a supremely cunning man, outfoxed JP Kim in the Presidential bid, promising that JP would be his heir-apparent, and later threw him into a den of wolves mercilessly, not once but twice.)

It was irrelevant for the Machiavellian flimflam man whether the presence of the USFK may harm the chance of the national unification or hinder the progress of North-South talks, because, first, DJ Kim has never envisaged that the national unity could be achieved during his Presidency and second, he had no choice but to work with “the material at hand”…that is, he cannot change the status of the USFK presence at the engagement of the Sunshine Policy, therefore, he could only start with an outlandish and oxymoronic assumption that the USFK presence is somewhat beneficial to the national unity.

His main concern was to leave his job with the legacy of the first man in the Korean history who opened the road to reconciliation with the Northern brothers and accordingly was rewarded with a prestigious Prize.
He was a moral monster who knew that he has to sell his unattainable scheme to people whatever means available in order for him to steal the Nobel Prize. (His lapdogs even formed the lobby group to prop up his chance of getting the Prize and actively lobbied for the Prize.)
And he did the con job superbly of creating an illusion of peace through the tear-jerking reunion of the separate families, the Potempkin Mt. Diamond Tour, North-South Soccer Games, Economic Development Projects, and so on, with the taxpayer’s money, not with his own money.
It was the grand scheme of fraud that brought him a Prize and showered Koreans with a heavy wet dream.

Again, the flimflam man metamorphoses into an apologist, when he got caught red-handed that he purchased his Northern brother with a cool cash of $500 million US, as Machiavelli endorsed that “all things of men are in motion and cannot remain fixed.” (People never forget that he was a committed advocate against the USFK presence in the South Korea until his ascension to power.)
He steadily maintained his ignorance on the scandal of $500 million US up to the last week of his Presidency supported by a phalanx of his lapdogs who penguin-walks and duck-talks like him on the issue.
When jig is up, he came up with a legal argument of “sovereign immunity”…

He said that he only did the sleazy things, despite its illegalities, to ease tensions, promoting peace in the Korean peninsular and it was in the national interest.
However, he would bear any responsibility on the matter, not through the judicial action but the political solution...whining that “Please don’t send me in jail where my son is rotting, Please.”
He hides himself behind the shield of sovereign immunization under the justification of “raison detat”, for the good of the country.
His apologia, “I did what I did out of loyalty to the country so as to help it to live in peace with the hope of unification,” smells stink to heaven, when one examines the timing of remittance was just before the Summit that brought him a Nobel Peace Prize.

It is now confirmed that the slush fund, which bought him a Nobel Peace Prize, was from the massive illegal loans made to the Hyundai Corp under the order of the flimflam man, the recipient of the Prize.
The flimflam man has maintained the long history of collaboration with the Chaebol Group (the Korean Conglomerates) that had supplied him with the ceiling high apple-boxes of cold cash. (He himself admitted it).
And he has become a comprador poodle for the Wall Street Robberbarons, placing every available national treasures on the international flea market bloc for fire sale under the name of the free market economy.

In his financial and business sector restructuring, his government has lost more than half of W160 trillion that was injected to salvage the Korean economy through the misappropriation and theft by the CEOs and business executives of the Chaebols. (He released these convicted CEOs under the amnesty program just before his presidential term ends, as he released most of the military gangsters from gallows when he became the President)
The flimflam man let go of Daewoo Chairman, who swindled billions of dollar from the company, masterminding the biggest accounting fraud in history that surpassed World Com and Enron, and promised the Chairman there would be no criminal prosecution against him.
(The man appears only to be good at best to get the Amnesty International Award for releasing a smorgasbord of so many convicted criminals, thieves, crooks, financial swindlers, spies, traitors, and military dictators.)

For the flimflam man, laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to prosecute only the weak, like the common criminals, and too weak to hold the strong, like CEOs, big shots, his friends and eunuchs.
As he became a co-conspirator who abets to swindle the national treasure and leaves the crooks scot-free with the luxury of the stolen goods, the charge of the grand larceny and fraud might or should form the basis of a legal prosecution against him.
I bet my ass that the flimflam man, at least, would not be recalled in the Korean history as a honorable first recipient of Nobel Peace Prize and the first gate-opener on the road to the North, but castigated to the historical shelves where many odious schlumps like the Korean traitor, Lee Wan-young, the ousted President Synman Rhee, and the military dictator Gen. Park Chunghee, are rotting and comforting each others.