Article: Changing the way South Korea runs. (President Kim Young Sam reforms government)

Fixing a traffic ticket in Korea was always a snap. A 10,000-won bill, worth about $12.50, stuffed behind a driver's license and passed to a traffic cop, turned a citation into a brief lecture on road safety. "Every traffic policeman--without exception--takes this money," says Song Hokeun, owner of a small company that makes industrial cutting tools. Cops are not the only ones on the take in Korea. So are customs inspectors, fire wardens, bureaucrats of every description, journalists and schoolteachers, who periodically receive chonji--envelopes stuffed with cash--from anxious parents who do not want their child to be neglected.

But since he took office in ...

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