Is it too early to call this Gamegate?
If you live in Korea you cannot help but notice all the hoopla over the emerging Sea Story gambling scandal. It has been taking the first ten minutes of every local news broadcast lately.
Game rooms like Sea Story are scattered all over Korea. They have sprouted up like mushrooms over the last few years. My little neighborhood in Ansan has two and there are many more in spread across the city and about 15,000 in the entire country.
The games are basically slot machines. The game rooms avoid government restrictions on gambling by paying the winners in certificates with a maximum value of 20,000 won, rather than cash. (TIME OUT: Is it just me, or does that seem like a stupid loophole to you too?)
The problem is that many of the machines have apparently been rigged to pay out more money. While that would seem like good news for gamblers, the real effect is to attract more desperate folks to the game rooms, who in turn gamble away their rent in the hope of winning a big prize that will solve their financial problems. Prosecutors plan to sieze up to 60,000 illegally programmed machines if the courts rule that they are in fact illegal.
I know what you are thinking: “So Andy, what does all this have to do with President Roh?”
I am glad you asked and, if there is any dirt in this for Roh, I am sure the Chosun will find it….
… and they do not disappoint. We have Roh’s nephew working for one of the gambling operations:
The scandal has snowballed since it emerged that President Roh Moo-hyun’s nephew is involved in an adult slot machine game company that markets the highly addictive game “Sea Story.”
the government giving lax supervision of said gambling operations:
“We have evidence showing that the media rating board approved game programs after a perfunctory review,” the prosecutor added.
influence pedaling:
“The top people make the final decision on whether to approve a gambling program or not. It’s a power game,” one is heard to say. “Don’t you know that … and … run the gift certificate business behind the scenes?” The two people mentioned are well-known public figures.
and even the dirty Japanese (OK Korean-Japanese but close enough):
“A Japanese pachinko parlor association used its influence to get the Korea Media Rating Board approve the gambling program.”
Those late two bits are from a taped conversation between two game room owners and could just be a couple of buddies talking out of their backsides.
To top it all off, the Chosun also reports that lawmakers from Korea’s two leading parties took cash from companies related to the gambling rooms:
Uri Party lawmakers Moon Hee-sang and Shin Ki-nam and the opposition Grand National Party’s Kang Jae-sup took large contributions from companies that issued the gift certificates gamblers win in lieu of money for video game arcades like “Sea Story,” the Chosun Ilbo has learned. The major shareholders and key executives of 19 businesses designated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the gift certificate program appear on a list of supporters who made large contributions to politicians between 2004 and 2005 obtained from the National Election Commission.
There was probably nothing illegal in the contributions since they were reported to the NEC, but the Chosun and I thought you should know.
So, what do you get when you add all of this up? So far, a big fat pile of nothing. We have legal contributions to politicians, a tape of two unknown guys saying things that may or may not be true and the lax enforcement of the law that we all expect from the Korean government. As for Roh’s nephew, I have not seen anything so far to tie him directly to any influence peddling. Until I do, this thing looks like no big deal.
17 Comments
Ah, I was wondering what these headlines about 바다이야기오락실 and 노지원 were all about…
Does this mean pachinko operators in Japan are behind this (as hinted above)? Those are generally Korean-owned and it sounds like the same kind of loophole is being exploited. In pachinko, you win bricks. Somehow, those plain bricks are magically valuable to a guy in a window around the corner who will pay you for them. But pachinko isn’t gambling, because they are only giving away bricks.
Sorry, 오락기, not 오락실.
Andy, re your pointing out that as of yet, there’s little that’s actually substantive that’s come out of this so far. In my neck of the woods in British Columbia, there was a scandal a decade back involving a two-bit bingo (yes, bingo) operation and fundraising for the provincial political party that was (a) in power at the time and (b) constantly on the outs with the main local daily paper. Ultimately, the provincial premiere had to resign, even though this had all happened in the past and even his critics agreed he had absolutely nothing to do with the scandal.
By the way, in his place, we got someone whose populist, off-the-cuff, sending-the-place-to-heck-in-a-handbasket antics were wholly anticipatory of President Roh!
They say a lot of the pachinko owners in Japan have N. Korea connections and the money goes to Pyongyang–follow the money here, this could get interesting.
Whoah…
The Yangban wrote:
“Is it too early to call this Gamegate?”
Not that anyone should care and this is totally OT, but for reference, the scandal I referred to up above was called “Bingogate.” You can Google it.
Is “Seastorygate” too much of a mouthful?
Roh’s nephew was quoted as saying he thought “Sea Story” was the name of a chain of seafood restaurants.
michael (#4),
Now THAT is an interesting angle.
Yangban, I’m suprised you didn’t mention the North Korea angle. As soon as you said “Korean-Japanese” I was waiting for that angle to be mentioned. I’m sure the administration won’t have the prosecution pushing it, but I’m suprised the GNP hasn’t….
USinKorea,
I might have thought to look into the NK angel some if I thought there was something more to this scandal than meets the eye (If KDJ can use construction companies to channel money to Kim Jong-il, why cann’t Roh use gambling dens?)
But at the moment there are too many missing pieces for me to make that kind of jump. Right now I suspect that the whole mess is being overhyped.
On the other hand, maybe I am just slow.
Yanks, 5 game sweep of the BoSox!
The Economist had a good little story on pachinko recently. A number of similarities:
http://www.economist.com/busin.....id=7233963
“The Japanese authorities attempt to clean up the pachinko business”
I second Mr. Jackson, there’s more hype here than substance to the story so far. The “Japanese pachinko parlor association” mention just caught my attention, since they do/did send money to the norks, and if they were setting up in S. Korea, well, why not speculate based on nothing much?
I hear rumor of a “talent” or celebrity that is involved too. Apparently he was a bigfund raiser for Noh, and somehow managed to be the manager of this company (he said they asked him to be the manager after seeing him walking around the building - he had an office in the same building as this company apparently).
Boy, if there is one thing that Koreans — with their hot tempers, unrealistic hopes for miracles, love of drama — would seem predisposed to, it is a gambling problem. These “Sea Story” places just look sleazy. Today I noticed a copycat place, too — same color scheme, different name.
I hope President Makeup’s nephew is heavily involved.
Damn Koreans and their gambling addictions…the worst in the world.
I’ve had these sleazballs drive down the sidewalk while letting flyers for this place fall out of their auto-bike. These are nothing but gangsters and crooks and if the president’s nephew is a part of it, it must be crooked all the way up.