printIt may be symbolic, but the offer of resignation made by “South Korea’s prime minister … over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking,” and the death of hundreds of children, is not insignificant. And it is in stark contrast to the conduct of the American government and bureaucracy.
In the US, government uses its alphabet soup of agencies to spy on (NSA), intimidate (IRS), humiliate (TSA), and dispossess (ICE) the American people. Contra South Korea, nobody ever pays for these infractions, much less offers himself up for punishment or public shaming.
Assassin Sam deploys the most formidable military in the world to eradicate entire countries in the name of a mockery of freedom (Iraq)—and nobody ever resigns, much less offers to resign. Not Cheney, not Bush (of the WMD fame), not Colon Powell; not Condoleezza the skeeza (“who had categorically denied she possessed the analytical wherewithal to connect the dazzlingly close dots between Arab men practicing their aeronautical take-off skills and terrorism”), and not Obama (the abominable creature who drops drones on faraway villagers, leveled Libya, nationalized a 1/6 of the private economy and robbed many millions of their healthcare), nor dominatrix Lois Lerner (a vile and corrupt Obama operative), on and on.
In South Korea, shame and honor still play a corrective role in national politics:
… South Korea’s prime minister offered to resign Sunday over the government’s handling of a deadly ferry sinking, blaming “deep-rooted evils” and irregularities in a society for a tragedy that has left more than 300 people dead or missing and led to widespread shame, fury and finger-pointing.
The resignation offer comes amid rising indignation over claims by the victims’ relatives that the government didn’t do enough to rescue or to protect their loved ones. Most of the missing and dead were high school students on a school trip. Officials have taken into custody all 15 people involved in navigating the ferry that sank April 16, a prosecutor said. …
… “As I saw grieving families suffering with the pain of losing their loved ones and the sadness and resentment of the public, I thought I should take all responsibility as prime minister,” Chung said. “There have been so many varieties of irregularities that have continued in every corner of our society and practices that have gone wrong. I hope these deep-rooted evils get corrected this time and this kind of accident never happens again.”
UPDATE (4/27): Myron Robert Pauli writes: “… not to mention Slick Willie whose conduct was probably not criminal due to prosecutorial sandbagging and irrelevance but whose conduct was shameful enough to merit resignation. The woman in charge of GSA during the “hooker conference in Vegas” scandal did resign not that it did her any good [the lower level malefactors were not punished and, in typical overreaction, government scientists WERE and continue to be severely restricted].