in regard to deferred compensations. In sum, deferred compensation promoted efficiency
of bureaucratic job performance by providing incentives on the one hand, and still
facilitated policy autonomy by disconnecting direct deals around compensation on the
other.
To rephrase the process of democratization-driven bureaucratic deterioration from
the systemic point of view, military withdrawal and regionalism destabilized deferred
compensation by breaking down policy networks. Political incursion into public firms as
a consequence of military withdrawal increased heterogeneity within policy networks
because new political elites and bureaucrats had few chances of mingling together before
they met in public firms. In contrast, elite bureaucrats and military officers had had
diverse channels of association previously.
With the breakdown of policy networks,
objective standards for distributing post-retirement jobs were lost. The military
withdrawal was full of misfortune for bureaucrats although it might have been good for
the new political elites. Economic bureaucrats lost their interest in job performance and
Korea’s bureaucratic policy efficiency dropped concomitantly.
Regionalism, as hinted earlier, was conducive to corruption. Political elites or
bureaucrats with political connections thrust themselves into private firms, increasing the
probability of political-business collusion. Otherwise, some bureaucrats sought a private
position for themselves, which opened economic policies in their jurisdiction to high
vulnerability to favoritism. Policy autonomy that had supported Korea’s bureaucratic
capability for decades was doomed to disappear. After all, deferred compensation lost its
21
Two main sources of interaction between the two elite groups are Korea’s draft system and the Graduate
School of National Defense. When a junior governmental official has to go for military service after he
passes the high-level civil service exam, he is usually assigned to headquarters or other high level
command posts. The military services provide a meeting place between future bureaucratic and military
elites. By the time the government official becomes a director in an economic agency, he has to go for
national security study in the Graduate School where future military generals come for education.
Therefore, elite bureaucrats and military officers have chances to know each other twice, both in critical
moments of their careers.
19
Convention