The trials and tribulations of Asian leaders make the indictment of Donald Trump for allegedly paying off a porn actress to shut her up look like a petty episode that should flicker, flare and fade.
In Asia, former leaders have gone to jail with a regularity that proves the enduring truth of the Shakespearean line, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” They may not have been monarchs, but they all wore figurative crowns of thorns.
Sometimes, it seems, all that distinguishes the records of some Asian leaders is the degree of corruption.
Malaysia’s former prime minister, Najib Razak, is serving 12 years in prison for accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes. The country’s Supreme Court has just refused to review the sentence. He’s hoping the country’s king will pardon him.
In many cases, the corruption was of more gargantuan proportions.
In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in the People Power Revolution of 1985-86. Forced to flee to Hawaii with his profligate wife Imelda, their two daughters and son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., and cronies with whom they had divided massive bribes, Mr. and Mrs. Marcos were accused of making off with billions of dollars, plus gold bars and costly gifts.
Cases against Imelda and the billionaire cronies are still tied up in the courts. Marcos died in Honolulu in 1989. Bongbong was elected president last May, and his mom Imelda and two sisters stood beside him at his inauguration.
In Indonesia, General Suharto, having seized power from Sukarno in 1967 by promising to eradicate corruption, ruled for 32 years until he was finally overthrown amid charges of massive corruption and nepotism. Before he died in 2008, he and his sons were said to have accumulated one of the world’s largest fortunes from their control over the country’s huge oil output and hundreds of other enterprises.
Sometimes the charges, though, may not be entirely about corruption.
In Myanmar, the country’s military junta has extended Aung San Suu Kyi’s prison sentence to 33 years. Never mind that she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, while under house arrest, or that she finally rose to power as state counselor in 2016. The country’s armed forces overthrew and jailed her two years ago for a wide range of alleged offenses, including corruption.
In South Korea, the long-ruling dictator, Park Chung-hee, was assassinated in 1979 by his intelligence chief. A general, Chun Doo-hwan, soon seized power, leading to protests across the country and a revolt in May 1980 in the southwestern city of Gwangju, in which soldiers fired on the crowd, killing more than 200.
One of Asia’s great show trials was that of Chun and General Roh Tae-woo, who had been elected president as Chun’s successor in 1987 after Chun promised to step down amid the biggest protests in Korean history. Roh served a five-year term, but he and Chun were arrested and convicted in 1996 for corruption and the Gwangju massacre, which was carried out by troops under Roh’s command.
Sentenced to death, on top of lengthy prison terms, Chun and Roh were amnestied and freed in early 1998 to give an impression of national unity at the inauguration of Kim Dae-jung, elected president in 1997 — many years after Chun had jailed him for inspiring the 1980 revolt.
Kim, promising reconciliation with the North, flew to Pyongyang in June 2000 for the first North-South Korea summit, but the euphoria surrounding his talks with then-North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and his Nobel Peace Prize faded into how he made it happen. Finally, it was revealed he had authorized the illicit payment of at least $500 million to Kim Jomg Il’s regime, which went on developing nuclear warheads before the North’s first nuclear test in 2006.
Subsequent Korean presidents also were involved in scandals. Kim’s successor, Roh Moo-hyun, having completed his five-year term in 2008, committed suicide in 2009 after his wife was exposed in a bribery investigation.
The next two presidents, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, also were jailed in corruption cases. Lee, the former chairman of Hyundai Construction, served as president from 2008 to 2013 but was convicted of bribery and embezzlement nine years later and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, from which he was released in 2022 by the current president, Yoon Suk-yeol.
Park endured far worse. Accused of corruption and abuse of power, she was the target in 2016 and 2017 of daily mass demonstrations in Korea’s “Candlelight Revolution” — named for the LED candles held by protesters. Jailed, impeached and ousted in 2017, she was sentenced to more than 20 years but freed in 2021 by her successor, Moon Jae-in, who was elected after helping to bring about her downfall.
Corruption also has marked the fairly recent history of Asia’s great giants, China and India.
After China’s Great Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the “gang of four,” including Jiang Qing, wife of Mao Zedong, controlled the levers of power. Overthrown and tried after Mao’s death in 1976, they were imprisoned for life. The hanging of “Madame Mao” in prison in 1991 was said have been by suicide.
In India, Rahul Gandhi, great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was kicked out of the parliament in March after his conviction for libel. His offense: defaming the prime minister, Narendra Modi, whom he accused of dispensing favors.
Gandhi still may aspire to power while fighting a two-year jail sentence. He’s the son and grandson of two former prime ministers. His father, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated in 1991, and his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter, was assassinated in 1984. Indira, convicted of election fraud in 1975, clung to power — and later declared an “emergency,” leading to the arrest of opposition politicians.
Nor has Japan, a land of law and order, been immune from corruption scandals. Kakuei Tanaka, “the computerized bulldozer,” prime minister in the early 1970s, was arrested in 1976 for having accepted nearly $2 million in bribes from Lockheed to get All Nippon Airways to purchase its planes. Sentenced to four years in prison, he was still free on appeal when he died in 1993.
Jailed ex-leaders don’t always get away with their lives.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, president and then prime minister of Pakistan from 1971 to 1977, was overthrown by General Zia al-Haq, who had him tried on a murder charge and executed two years later. Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, after having twice served as prime minister, was assassinated at a political rally in 2007 while campaigning for assembly elections.
That was a decade before Imran Khan, captain of the Pakistan team that won the cricket World Cup in 1992, parlayed his popularity as an athlete into election to the National Assembly, which elected him as prime minister in 2018. Voted out by the assembly nearly four years later, badly wounded in an assassination attempt, he faces corruption charges, which he strongly denies.
But not all Asian leaders are corrupt.
Lee Kuan Yew, who died in 2015, rose to power as prime minister of Singapore in 1959, six years before it broke away from Malaysia as an independent country. Lee remained prime minister until 1990. Four years later, his son, Lee Hsieng Loong, took over and holds the post to this day.
The Lee dynasty has effectively crushed political opposition. Singapore prides itself as a “clean and green” country, free of pollution and corruption.
Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He currently is a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea. He is the author of several books about Asian affairs.