SOUTH KOREAN president Lee Myung-bak has good reason not to be in a charitable mood. Nearly 10 times a day the official state news agency of neighbouring North Korea insults Lee, calling him a “stooge,” “lackey,” “fascist,” “dictator” and other names. He has been insulted 1,700 times so far this year, according to a study released this month.
He also gets little love at home, with approval ratings hovering at about 20 per cent and seven out 10 South Koreans telling pollsters that they think he caters to the rich. Yet charity – in whopping big doses – is precisely what Mr Lee doled out in Seoul on Monday.
He donated $26.2 million worth of commercial property – about 80 per cent of his total personal wealth – to a new foundation for needy students. He said his wife and four children supported the donation.
Mr Lee had promised before the 2007 presidential election that he would donate all his wealth – acquired over a 27-year career as a construction industry executive – to society, save for one family house. He announced on Monday that he could now deliver on that extraordinary campaign pledge.
“Today is a wonderful and joyous day,” he said in a statement. “Looking back, I realise everyone who has helped me become who I am now were people who were poor. I believed one way to return the favours they afforded me was to use my wealth for a good cause.”
Mr Lee (67) was elected president, in large measure, because his rags-to-riches life story resonated with South Koreans, whose country has travelled a similar trajectory, rising from destitution and dictatorship at the end of the Korean War to become the world’s 15th-largest economy, as well as a vibrant democracy.
Mr Lee was born in Osaka, Japan, at a time when Koreans were ruled by the imperial Japanese government. After the second World War, when his family sailed to Korea, the ship carrying all their possessions sank. As the fifth of seven children, he put himself through school by helping his mother in a vegetable market.
Although he left his position as chairman of Hyundai Construction to go into politics in the early 1990s, his aura as a self-made corporate millionaire has stuck with him. It helped him to win votes initially, but has since turned off many constituents.
The president has struggled to escape a perception that he remains a captive of the conglomerate culture (Samsung, Hyundai, LG Electronics) that made him rich and continues to dominate South Korea’s economy.
At the funeral of his populist predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun, who committed suicide in May while being investigated for corruption, Mr Lee was personally berated by mourners who accused of him of hounding Mr Roh into jumping off a cliff to his death.
But Mr Lee’s charitable gift could help change his image. It clearly differentiates him from a pack of super-rich South Korean business leaders whose financial scandals rarely result in prison terms and whose family wealth is often funnelled to heirs in convoluted ways that evade taxes.
For a sitting head of state, the value of Mr Lee’s gift “is unprecedented in the history of politics”, the president’s spokesman said.
Money for the scholarship fund will initially come from the rent now paid on three office buildings that Mr Lee is donating to a new foundation. That will amount to about $869,000 a year, his office said.To raise more money, the president's office added, the foundation may sell some of the buildings. – ( Los Angeles Times-Washington Postservice)