Change the Government Audit System

By Jay Kim

The Kim Chang-Joon Politics and Economy Academy, which I run in Korea, holds its weekly lecture at the National Assembly Building. On my way down from the third floor after a lecture last night, I saw about 100 young people in suits standing in line at the entrance of the main hall to get their ID cards back from the information desk.

The queue was so long that it nearly blocked the entrance.

Curious, I asked someone what was going on.

The person looked at me rather strangely and asked if I knew the government audit of the National Assembly was under way.

It was an unfamiliar scene to me.

In the US, I have seen the congressional building full of tourist groups, but I have never seen it so loud and busy, so full of government officials and so late at night. So, out of curiosity, I talked to some female government workers.

They grumbled that they were working for a minister and that they had to work in a hotel room, probably throughout the night, to prepare the minister's answers for the next day. Outside the building, a lone demonstrator held a placard.

The fuss around the National Assembly causes every government agency to go into a state of emergency for 20 days. In addition, some people strongly believe the heads of big corporations should be summoned to this audit hearing.

It is unimaginable in the US for Congress to summon and snarl at the heads of big corporations. If private corporations did something wrong, should it not be appropriate to follow legal procedures, and then the judgment of the judicial branch, rather than bring the business chiefs to the legislative branch to yell at them?

In the United States, Congress has only once summoned and chastised the heads of a big corporation ?in November of 2008.

General Motors was at real risk of bankruptcy and had asked Congress to provide 12 trillion won as a bailout loan. The General Motors executives and the other major companies in the US auto industry were at the congressional hearing because they had to appeal directly to Congress ?an institution that has budgetary authority ?to get such large additional amount.

At the congressional hearing, the CEO of GM at the time, Rick Wagner, was in a sweat, and members of Congress reprimanded him He then pleaded with Congress to help GM, a company with a 100-year history, to continue its crucial role for the US economy.

Congress then criticized the auto industry representatives for using private jets to attend the hearing in...