Do you know about whistle blowing? It is an act of reporting information such as illegal transactions or illegal activities inside or outside the organization and making it public. In a word, it can be said to be an act of justice that makes the world a better place. Whistle blowing exists anywhere in the world. The frequent appearance of whistle blowing suggests that the society we live in has plenty of shortcomings.
If someone blows the whistle, it can lead to reforming social malpractices and create a healthier market order and structure. However, whistle-blowers are often alienated from the community. In a worse case scenario, they may become people who cannot adapt to society. Let’s look at contradictions and examples for which the whistleblower paid a heavy price despite doing a good deed.
Two incidents occurred in Korea. Last year, a member of the Samsung Electronics purchasing team accused the company of illegal practices. Samsung Electronics diverted 300 billion won from small businesses into its own profit sheet for one year. In addition, the company illegally demanded small and medium enterprises to reduce their unit price. Furthermore, they forged the manufacturer’s proposal and violated the Fair Trade Act. Most small and medium enterprises are not strong enough to face up to Samsung. The giant company leveraged its strength to deal with small businesses improperly by moving their profits into their own coffers. However, by hiding evidence and through, even the Fair Trade Commission was not able to uncover the company’s wrongdoings.
A big story of 2016 came from Gang changyong, a dentist who accused, via SNS, his industry of carrying out excessive medical treatment. It is an internal accusation case that became a big topic of the year. who became a big topic of the year. He invoked his conscience as a doctor who did not want to see customers bearing the costs of unnecessary treatments. He angered his professional colleagues and, eventually, someone retaliated against him disabling his SNS. He is a conscientious doctor for his patients, but a reprehensible whistle-blower for the other dentists. Many people posted malicious comments on his dental practice’s homepage. Now, he runs a dental clinic alone, but with convictions. Doing all the work by himself without staff, he is limited in the number of customers he can see – 20 a day. He keeps his strength by recalling the sacrifice the Independence Army made for the country during the hard times.
How are other countries handling whistleblowers? A case in point is Edward Snowden’s release of US confidential information in 2013. Snowden became disenchanted with the work of his employer, the Central Intelligence Agency. He got to know about spying activities directed at citizens he thought were illegal, especially a highly secret program codenamed ‘Prism.’ After six months, Snowden decided to go public and revealed that Prism was collecting personal information such as phone numbers, e-mails, call logs, credit card PINs from people around the world. The leakage of South Korea information reached 50 million. For this reason, many countries criticized the United States. Meanwhile, Edward Snowden left the United States, and took refuge in Russia where he continues his activities via SNS.
In 2014, Japan enacted a law on the protection of internal information providers following the Mitsubishi car accident. It is evaluated that this whistle-blower protection law contributed to eradicate the social malpractices inside Japan. More than 10 countries, including the UK, Australia and New Zealand, have established similar laws to protect the public interest information provision.
However, in Korea, our law is still in an incomplete state. The content of regulations is abstract and poorly written. South Korean lawyers also revealed the urgency of formulating a legal framework that draw protection provisions in detail and extend them to the private sector. South Korea must enact legislation like Japan or the UK to prevent accusations and retaliation against whistle-blowers
These laws are destined to protect society’s well being by ensuring that people are not alienated by illegal activities. Korea must make an effort in this direction