Nevertheless, what counters the dominance of conservative-oriented com-
panies in the media market is the increasing influence of new media in the
political process. For example, a progressive podcasting talk program,We Are
Tricksters, and Social Network Services (SNS) such as Facebook and Twitter
are known to have played an important role in the 2011 Seoul mayoral
by-election. Without the help of these new media, it would not have been
possible for a former civic activist, candidate Park Won-soon, to claim victory
against the ruling-party candidate Na Kyong-won. In response to this advance of
progressive podcasting and SNS in the public sphere, the Korea Comm-
unications Standards Commission, a content-regulatory arm of the Korea
Communications Commission, set up an SNS review section. It was inevitable
that this movement produced a number of doubts and criticisms at domestic
and international levels.^63
Corruption and increasing social polarization
The dark connection between bureaucrats and business elites is one cause of
governmental inefficiency. Korea needs qualified regulation, rather than
deregulation, in the direction of enhancing transparency and fair competition,
not only in the political sphere but also in the market economy. Notwithstanding
this belief, what is worse in the Korean situation is that the relationship between
government and business is changing in the direction of the superiority of the
latter, reversing the relationship of the past. In other words, it is not the state but big
business that decides social and economic policies. The changed relationship
between the state and business cannot be more symbolically represented than in
President Lee Myong-bak’s exercise of the pardoning power for only a single
beneficiary, Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung Group, the biggest conglom-
erate in Korea, only four months after he had been found guilty of tax evasion and
breach of trust in 2009.
This connection has its roots in globalization and the concomitant domin-
ance of neoconservativism in much of Korean society. President Lee Myong-
bak’s business-friendly policy, i.e. deregulation of the business sector and privat-
ization of a number of government functions and facilities, together with tax
reduction for the wealthy, has accelerated social polarization, resulting in the
collapse of the middle class and of small and medium businesses in favor of
large conglomerates. The top five conglomerates of Korea (Samsung,
(^63) See Chico Harlan, “In S. Korea, a shrinking space for speech,”Washington Post, Decem-
ber 23 , 2011 , available atwww.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-s-korea-a-shrink-
ing-space-for-speech/ 2011 / 12 / 21 /gIQAmAHgBP_print.html.