Update: Seven of the 26 who had to take a third round failed.
Original Post: As if passing the bar were not tough enough, it seems that Korean lawyers-to-be face a loyalty test as well (Korea Times):
Twenty-six who took this year’s bar examination were nominated for “in-depth interviews” after showing pro-North Korea or anti-United States tendencies, a local newspaper Kyunghyang Shinmun reported on Sunday.
In-depth interviews are given to those who showed suspicious tendencies during the third stage of the bar examination, which was adopted for the first time. The third stage was formed of two parts: a discussion among 10 candidates and three judges interviewing individual candidates.
So, what specifically did the testees say?
Some of the 26 were said to have given the judges the impression that they approved of the North’s nuclear test.
Some picked the U.S. as the main enemy of the country.
Let me go on the record as saying that not letting a guy pass because he hates the US is pretty dumb.
On the other hand, loyalty of any kind to the Pyongyang regime is, ipso facto, disloyalty to the Seoul regime and, in my opinion, grounds for not allowing someone to be a part of the South Korean legal system. If the interviews are designed to ferret out Pyongyang loyalist, then I’m all for it.
Unless something has changed, the Kim Jong-il regime still claims to be the rightful ruler of all of the Korean punisula (as does the Seoul government). Clearly, Pyongyang does not recognized the legitimacy of South Korea’s government or legal system. So it is only logical that anyone supporting Pyongyang should not be allowed to be a part of a legal system that Pyongyang seeks to destroy.
(BTW, while I am on the subject, I am one of a distinct minority in the IKK who sees a place for Korea’s infamous National Security Law.)
Of course, real Pyongyang agents would know better and just keep their true opinions to themselves, so this extra round is really just a way of weeding out folks who are too stupid to know when to shut up.
Hey, at least these guys aren’t facing Japan’s bar, which boasts a mind bogling 97% failure rate.
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18 Comments
isn’t President Roh also a lawyer? I wonder how he would fare in such a test, answered honestly.
The Korean bar examination is, to my knowledge, more competitive than the Japanese bar examination. A pass rate of 3% here in Korea would be seen as letting in a bunch of unqualified losers. And with the Korea Bar Association taking measures against just that with its forthcoming Foreign Legal Consultants Act (more on that later), it would be very surprising to see further loosening of “standards”.
Plus, I feel sorry for these would-be lawyers, who were told that “nationalism” would be one of the competencies they would have to demonstrate in order to be admitted to the bar. Being anti-American is almost a mandatory component of Korean nationalism these days.
Woah.
i think it’s important to differentiate between supporting the nk regime and agreeing with or supporting some things they do. Admittedly its hard to find anything to support in nk, but perhaps the increased role of women which would have to be better than sk. now i wouldn’t say agreeing with that makes me a nk supporter.
I know it’s not the point of your post, but just to address that blurb, I was of the understanding that North Korea’s social and political structure was even more patriarchal than South Korea’s.
Hmmm, in China women definitely have a closer-to-equal role, with many women visible in high-level positions in the business, political, academic, social and administrative sectors — as it should be under Communist theory and Mao’s dictum that “women hold up half the sky”… quite the contrast to South Korea.
So if what Robert says above is true (and i have seen little clear info on that), it just goes as another example to show how far Juche is different from “Communism”…
On the other hand, thinking back to my student days (when Julius C. was marching on Rome), those politically active candidates who failed either their classes or the bar always found a way to attribute that fact to political oppression engendered by their oft-expressed views. The idea that they might have spent more time in study, and less time agitating in their favourite anti-American causes, never entered their minds.
Actually, I think the test is a good thing. You wouldn’t want to be represented by a lawyer who isn’t a good liars, would you?
Sorry, Brendon. I was too tempting to resist.
…liar,…
robert,
i actually wondered about that because i couldn’t really recall any women in positions higher that tour guides in what i had seen from NK, but it was the only thing i couyld think of to agree with in NK. so i guess if that is gone the whole test thing might not be such a bad idea.
Interestingly enough, the bar exam story is the most looked-at over at Naver.com right now. Of the 26 that were given the in-depth interview, seven failed. Interestingly, one of the guys who picked the United States as the “main enemy” saved himself by changing his position in the interview, while they guy who said North Korean nukes don’t pose a threat to South Korea passed since committee members felt that it was important to be inclusive and, ultimately, this was the test to become prosecutors or judges, in which case such a view would become an issue.
Nevertheless, seven was a big number to drop during the interview—over the last decade, only one test taker has ever failed after being referred for an in-depth interview. The fact that seven were dropped—all at once—is really quite unusual.
BTW, 37 percent of those who passed the bar this year were women, the highest ratio even in Korea.
Brendon has hit the nail squarely on the head. The problem is not that anyone is substantively anti-American, just that they were too unsubtle about expressing it. As a foreigner, you’d be hard put to find a Korean lawyer who will act assertively as your advocate because the the notion that bar membership makes one an “officer of the court” of sorts here means lawyers are first and foremost servants of Korean interests, narrowly construed - especially if they conflict with those of the client to whom ostensibly one has an overriding duty of loyalty (short of actually breaking the law on his behalf). Such loyalty, along with discretion, integrity and elementary competence (when it comes to modern commercial transactions) are in desperately short supply here among the sharks in the pool.
You really do have to wonder who would be enough of an idiot to express support for the Worker’s Party during their exam… Since any real agent for KJI would have the brains to keep their opinions to themselves, anyone else who openly expresses support has to be mentally deficient. I know I wouldn’t want anyone that stupid defending me in court.
So this is how the tacit Korean ability to lie through one’s teeth is institutionalized in their mockery of a legal system?
As much time as I’ve spent here lately, you’d think after a while I’d cease to be astonished. Does the concept of loyalty to a “Republic of Korea” (embodied in an oath, in the same way that a US lawyer is expected to take an oath after passing the bar) really mean anything to South Korean “elites”? Did it ever?
Maybe all the military coups over the years have made the current government come to be considered as a sort of vaguely temporary “government of convenience” for politically astute and aware South Koreans(?) Furthermore, perhaps this has something to do with how Syngman Rhee is currently regarded by them, in terms of the “founding” of the country (I gather he’s not held in quite the same reverence as, say, George Washington was in the US 45 years after his respective death).
For example, I gather that SR used a train (the same one mentioned in the cultural properties post above?) to evacuate himself and the ROK gold reserve out of Seoul, very early on after the North Korean attack on 25 June 1950. Not quite the same thing as going to the front personally and trying to inspire your forces in the defense.
More currently, I’m thinking particularly of the ROK/”Korean” baseball team, playing in the US recently in the world championships (a year or two ago, can’t remember offhand exactly when it was now but it was covered extensively here on this blog)
Because of that coverage, I took the time to watch at least one of the games in which the Korean team played (it was indeed good baseball). One of the US TV announcers noted, rather casually in passing, that the Korean lanaguage uniform logos said “Korea” (not Republic of Korea). He went on to mention that this had been done at the players’ insistence.
So — maybe all controversy/”problems” as to prospective ROK lawyers could be “avoided”, if they are merely asked in their interviews as to whether or not “Korea is one”.
Perhaps I am just being tendentious, but to me this seems to go to the heart of the issue as to whether the US forces should stay or not. The essence of the matter is essentially IMO a moral one (not a matter of “realpolitik/balance of power in NE Asia/etc etc”).
I don’t think “anti-communism” is ultimately enough. Just how long can we go on acting as though US forces are expected to fight and possibly die in the defense of a Korean republic if South Korean elites are themselves deeply ambivalent about it?
Wow. I’m personally just surprised that there’s actually a standard in place here (even if it is a bit misguided.) After all, isn’t this the same country where even being accepted into a university or graduate program creates enough of an entitlement that you literally can’t fail to graduate? What’s next? Are we going to find out that there’s some sort of standard for doctors, too?
Paul H. Reference Syngman Rhee and: ” Not …going to the front personally and trying to inspire (his) forces in the defense.” That was not the standard of the time. I don’t think you will find any WWII leaders who did so either. In 1950-53 Korea there appears to have been a clear understanding of political leadership duties versus military leadership duties. To take the anti-communist North Korean guerrillas evacuated from Hwanghae province as an example, they had political leaders who stayed back on the islands now under U.N. control, who were not expected to accompany operations on the mainland, and “gun” leaders who were subordinate to them and did accompany raids and reconnaissance missions into North Korea. My article in Nov 1984’s Army magazine was based upon a more comprehensive study by a LTC Daly, who spent some time with the guerrillas in 1951-52, and he specifically commented on that division of responsibilities. Perhaps it came from the Confucian tradition, but my impression is that the line between civil and military leadership is generally well defined even in Western societies. George W’s touchdown in Baghdad, with the security forces and planning effort required, cannot be co-related to S.R.’s situation, given the paucity of resources available to the president of the ROK at that period.
It’s very hard to flunk out of the “good” US law schools too. I know; I went to one of the better law schools — the University of Washington — and didn’t study all that much, but still my grades remained (slightly above) average. (But I may have come close to getting kicked out for thought crime when the Grim & Humorless Women’s Brigade got ahold of me.)