The Explosive Selling of the Book Named 'Justice'

“Justice: What’s the Right Thing to do?” written by Michael Sandel, Harvard professor, was translated into Korean language about three months ago. This serious, heavy-subject book was sold over 300,000 copies in Korea.

As the Korea’s publisher was excited at the tremendous hit, it invited Michael Sandel to give his lecture for the promotion of more selling. So many people gathered to hear the lecture at a big hall of a university, a surprised attendant jokingly said, “ A dead Micahel Jackson came here to sing?”

‘Justice:--‘ could be classified as the humanities and liberal arts category, in which if a new book is sold over over 10,000 copies, the one is regarded a super bestseller in Korea. Therefore, the figure of over 300,000 copies is a very, very super bestseller. This size of selling is a kind of social phenomenon, which needs to be interpreted, for example, why people read it, what their hidden intentions represent.

In my opinion, Korean people seem to feel that the present social situation is not in a state of justice, especially part of which is at least to blame on the recent hearings about some minister nominees.

While the polarization of wealth between the high and low classes widens greatly, the irregularities of some minister nominees were consecutively disclosed in a seires of hearings. An appointee to the Knowledge Economy minister's post had bought an old shabby house one year before the local government’s announcement of the developmemt master plan. Another appointee to Culutre and Tourism minister's post moved his addresses illegally in order to send daughters to good schools. Even the incumbent foreign minister resigned his office on suspicion that he might interfere with the recruitment of the new staff members belonging to his mininstry. His daughter was by chance passed alone in the special adopting test.

The present young and middle-aged generations are more furtherly angry about these irregularities of the high classes than the elder one. The public senses aggravated rapidly. The ruling power was forced to cancel the appointment of the two nominees and accepted the resignation of the foreign minister immediately.

In Korea, there have existed two insensitivities, one is no sense for safety, another no sense for irregularities. No paying attention to safety still results in many industrial disasters and accidents every year. No sense for the irregularities, however, shows basical changes. The young and middle-aged generations (the thirties and forties) do not forgive the elites misdeeds sternly. More encouragingly, the generations would not accommodate themselves to corruption other than the elder ones.

Although the steps towards the advanced nations are slow, it seems clear that the young power is changing the established people’s insensitivities for several customary corruption and nepotism forcibly. (The end)