Diplomats seized with the consciousness of privileges are more keen on serving their masters and getting more public funds than pursuing diplomacy while riding roughshod over people, the editorial noted, and went on:

It was disclosed that there were chiefs of diplomatic missions who expropriated public money by increasing the number of persons present at dinners given at embassy offices and diplomats pocketed public money by falsifying the period of their official trips. There are also diplomats who issued visas after receiving bribes from brokers, diplomats who got public money by forging papers for the purchase of houses or cars and there are also diplomats who used official cars as their private ones.

But the south Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been busy to cover up all these wrongs or has shut its eyes to them though it knows about them better than any others.

The Committee for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Unification of the National Assembly of south Korea lets several groups tour different countries whenever inspection of state administration is conducted but they consider it as the most important program to attend dinners given by ambassadors to the relevant countries.

The ministry officially declared it would bring about a radical change in appointing diplomats, estimating their work and posting, etc. when there was a suspicion of the special appointment of the daughter of the then Minister Ryu Myong Hwan last year. But with the flow of time the promised reform including appointment and training of diplomats ended up in an anticlimax.