Source: Brownstone Institute | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
With the presidential pardon of Hunter Biden, many Americans were once again reminded that they now live under a two-tier justice system. Certain people and organizations are exempt from the normal judicial consequences of their actions, while others are not. Furthermore, the unfavored may also be punished not for any real crimes but rather for expressing unapproved opinions about politically controversial matters.
As I see it, many Korean dramas have a special relevance to our current era. They are often set against a background of high-level government collusion with corporate corruption, leaving the protagonists with few recources in addressing serious wrongdoing.
Moreover, whereas mainstream news reporters have often been glorified in much American popular entertainment, Korean dramas commonly portray them as just another ingredient of the same rotten mix.
Many Korean dramas revolve around the skullduggery and intrigues of a chaebol, which is a family-owned business conglomerate. Much of Korea’s economy is powered by these entities, which unsurprisingly have enormous political power and influence over many aspects of Korean life.
Unfortunately, this results in a super-wealthy caste of people who can behave like autocratic nation-state rulers and are often untouchable by law enforcement as well as shielded from criticism by the mainstream news media. However, this type of caste system is not only true of Korean society but also of the world in general nowadays.
In the globalist present, not only wealthy individuals like Bill Gates but also some powerful transnational entities benefit from similar unaccountability. This reality became especially conspicuous during the Covid panic they helped to generate.
Here I will introduce three Korean dramas that mirror what many in the post-Covid world experience.
My Secret, Terius/Terius Behind Me is a standard spy thriller with lighthearted comedy elements until Episode 10. Then it suddenly becomes prophetic. After the Covid outbreak, clips from that episode went viral, since the drama, which aired in 2018, had actually predicted various aspects of the Covid phenomenon.
In this drama, a fictional company named Samguk Pharmaceuticals develops a “Cors” vaccine to prevent coronavirus infections and is about to patent it. At the same time, the drama’s protagonists narrowly manage to avert a terrorist bioweapon attack with a gain-of-function enhanced coronavirus. Subsequently, we find out that the attack was actually engineered in order to create a worldwide panic to spur the vaccine’s sales.
Until the attack, the Korean Minister of Health refused to purchase the Samguk coronavirus vaccine, deeming it unnecessary. After the attack, a public outcry demanded that the government make the vaccine available, so the minister relented and decided to distribute it.
Of course, the real Covid story was far worse than the plot of My Secret, Terius. Anthony Fauci and other government officials actually bankrolled gain-of-function research that may have created Covid 19, and they also immensely profited from the sale of the supposedly preventative Covid injections. Furthermore, the real Covid panic was not a national incident but a worldwide disaster.
Another uncanny resemblance between Terius and the real world is the involvement of the NIS (“National Intelligence Service”), Korea’s version of the CIA. Rather than the whole organization, a secret cabal operating within the NIS called Cornerstone plots this conspiracy. In Covid reality, the CIA has been heavily involved in gain-of-function research and in the censorship of voices critical of the Covid injections and the governmental agencies overseeing the pandemic response.
Rather than predating Covid, the 2021 comedy-drama Vincenzo came out during the pandemic, necessitating the extensive use of CGI to substitute for scenes that could not be shot in Italy. The series was both highly popular and critically acclaimed internationally.
The story tracks the battle between a Korean-Italian former Mafia consigliere and a diabolical Korean corporate conglomerate named Babel. The conglomerate’s name has intentional Biblical connotations: It plans to construct an enormous tower to celebrate its power and achievements.
Behind the impressive corporate edifice, the conglomerate’s president is a murderous psychopath who operates in the shadows. His plans include launching an addictive, dangerous narcotic labeled RDU-90 on the Korean public, in spite of its fatal adverse effects on the participants in the drug’s trials. Does this sort of thing sound familiar?
On top of that, Babel is guilty of fraud and stock manipulation. However, since Babel controls much of the Korean court system through bribery and intimidation, no one can call the organization’s management to account –except for the cunning protagonists of the story, Vincenzo and his lawyer associate, Cha-young Hong.
In general, Babel thinks nothing of trampling down and killing ordinary people, such as the residents of a building that corporate executives have set their sights on. In that respect, it resembles certain famous pharmaceutical companies one could name. For good reason, Vincenzo and Hong call the conglomerate’s leaders “monsters” who are “worse even than serial killers.”
However, Babel’s executives eventually reap a legal (and violent) retribution from Vincenzo and Hong. Though the story is grim, and many die in the course of it, somehow Vincenzo manages to be hilarious at times, as in this scene between the two leads.
During their battle, Hong, Vincenzo, and others make some striking comments that especially resonate with people who suffered from Covid-era gaslighting and oppression. Until her awakening to reality, Hong works for the law firm representing Babel and refuses to believe in her client’s misdeeds, but her lawyer-father, who represents some of their victims, insists, “This is not a conspiracy theory.”
In Vincenzo, the mainstream news media also gets a shellacking for their whitewashing of Babel’s nefarious activities. In order to get advertising revenue and bribes, one news media corporation shamelessly defends and promotes Babel, even extolling the fashionable, handsome appearance of its chief executive. In a comical scam involving shamanism, Hong and Vincenzo get the news corporation’s president to reverse this policy and attack Babel instead.
Set in present-day Korea, the thriller Healer constantly alludes in flashbacks to the military dictatorship that ruled Korea until 1987. Korean President Yoon’s recent aborted attempt to impose martial law (with the support of the Korean military) seemed to hark back to that undemocratic era.
Most characters in Healer were formerly pirate radio station operators during the days of the dictatorship, when the news media was strictly censored and controlled by the government. Doing unapproved broadcasting was a serious crime. Out of that group, some went to prison, others were killed, and another betrayed his comrades to become a successful member of the corporate elite.
His new elite comrades rewarded the traitor by putting him in charge of a prominent mainstream news organization, where he could suppress or promote news stories that benefit their business interests. Thus the knowledge of some significant wrongdoing comes to be suppressed.
The main unscrupulous organization in Healer is Omega Holdings, which takes over various businesses and then runs them ruthlessly for profit alone. For instance, Omega carried out a biological experiment in a rural village that led to the deaths of 5 villagers and a local epidemic.
On top of that, Omega intentionally marketed a type of red lead paint that gradually weakens metal used in the construction of large structures such as ships, necessitating their eventual replacement (at a profit) by Omega. In one case, a bridge collapsed from the effects of this corrosive material.
However, an Internet news firm named Someday News manages to break such stories, damaging Omega’s reputation, even though a mainstream news company employee warns them, “No one can touch Omega Holdings.” The drama follows the fight that ensues between Someday and Omega. Melodrama, romance, and comedy accompany their back-and-forth battle.
In this way, Korean dramas often exhibit a parade of corrupt politicians, executives, judges, prosecutors, government officials, doctors, and mainstream news organizations, all on the payroll of the chaebol. The only things they really seem to fear are social media attacks and public exposure of their behavior.
Despite the powerful forces arrayed against them, the heroes and heroines of these dramas somehow overcome their adversaries in the end. In struggles against the current widespread institutional corruption, sometimes real people also get to receive some vindication. A Japanese friend and Covid-policy dissenter, delighted to hear about Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment as NIH director, told me recently, “I hope we will have more good news in 2025.”
