Wednesday, January 30, 2013  Korea's President Lee to Pardon
Cronies and "Too Big to Fail" Companies  Once upon a time, end-
of-tenure presidential pardons served a useful purpose as
reformers tried to correct past wrongs, such human rights
violations, which were too politically problematic at those
times. And in some cases involving foreigners, pardons could be
used to flush jails of non-Korean miscreants to planes heading
for their home countries.  But over the past decade, this
presidential prerogative has been misused to rescue political
cronies and executives of “too big to fail” enterprises, without
risking ensuing political blowback. While South Korea is better
than most Asian countries in being a nation of laws, there is an
understandable cynicism about the law held my most Koreans.  The
big fish have a way of getting undeserved leniency while the
more common Korean can expect a greater brunt of the law if
convicted. This is another example of what I’ve been recently
labeling as the “Two-Tier Korea” co