Bureaucrats’ Perception of Corruption
and Political Trust in South Korea*
Eunjung Choi**
Jongseok Woo***
This article examines how government officials’ perceptions of
corruption affect the evaluation of government effectiveness and
political trust and whether the outcomes are different from ordinary
citizens. On the one hand, one may expect that bureaucrats share
with citizens the belief that perceptions of corruption harm their
evaluations of government effectiveness and trust in government
because they are also members of the society. On the other hand,
bureaucrats may be more tolerant of corruption than ordinary citizens
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*** This work was supported by the University of South Florida’s 2014 New
Researcher Grant (number: 00000098980).
*** Eunjung Choi is a visiting professor in Government and International Affairs at
the University of South Florida. Her research interests are political behavior,
corruption, and political trust. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in
Asian Survey, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Contemporary Politics,
Pacific Focus, and Japanese Journal of Political Science, among others. Her current
research project analyses authoritarian legacies in Korea and Taiwan. E-mail:
echoi@usf.edu.
*** Jongseok Woo is an assistant professor of international studies at the University
of South Florida. He earned his Ph. D. (2007) in Government from the University
of Texas at Austin. His research interests include military politics, East Asian
security, authoritarian survival, and political corruption. He is the author of
Security Challenges and Military Politics in East Asia (2011). His work has
appeared or is forthcoming in Contemporary Politics, Pacific Focus, Interna-
tional Journal of Comparative Sociology, Communist and Post-Communist
Studies, and Japanese Journal of Political Science. E-mail: wooj@usf.edu.
KOREA OBSERVER, Vol. 46, No. 4, Winter 2015, pp. 669-698.
© 2015 by THE INSTITUTE OF KOREAN STUDIES.