With his dapper red scarf and orange- tinted hair, Kim Rae-in is a card-carrying member of the “paparazzi” posse, cruising Seoul on his beat-up motorcycle on the lookout for the next “gotcha” moment.
He’s not stalking starlets or pop singers. He’s after real money-making snapshots: the slouching salary man lighting up in a no-smoking area, the homeowner illegally dumping trash, the corner merchant selling stale candy to kids.
Kim, 34, a former gas station attendant, isn’t choosy. Even small crime pays big time — more than $3,000 in January alone.
“It’s good money,” he says. “I’ll never go back to pumping gas. I feel free now.” Kim is among a new breed of candid- camera bugs across South Korea — referred to as “paparazzi,” although their subjects are not the rich and famous but low-grade lawbreakers whose actions caught on film are peddled as evidence to government officials.
In recent years, officials here have enacted more than 60 civilian “reporting” programs that offer rewards ranging from as little as 50,000 won, or about $36, for the smallest infractions to 2 billion won, or $1.4 million, for reporting a large-scale corruption case involving government officials. (That one has yet to be made.) The paparazzi trend even has inspired its own lexicon. There are “seon-parazzi,” who specialise in pursuing election-law violators; “ssu-parazzi,” who target illegal acts of dumping garbage, and “seongparazzi,” who target prostitution, which is illegal in South Korea.
Amid the nation’s worsening economic crisis, officials say there are fewer government investigators to maintain public order. So they increasingly rely on a bounty-hunter style of justice.
Many paparazzi are out-of-work salary men, bored homemakers and college students who consider themselves deputised agents of the South Korean government.
To meet a growing demand, scores of paparazzi schools have sprung up, charging students $250 for three-day courses on how to edit film, tail suspected wrongdoers and operate button-sized cameras.
Although exact numbers are hard to come by, schools estimate that 500 professional paparazzi now work in South Korea, where many celebrities still walk the streets unhindered.
But not for long — at least one paparazzi academy is offering a course in stalking well-known people.
Few officials question the ethics of arming a citizenry against itself with zoom video and long-range lenses. “They don’t violate any laws, so there’s no reason to restrict them,” said a National Tax Service official, who declined to give his name. “They don’t infringe on others’ private lives, do they?” Yet many believe these furtive photographers are doing just that.
Some paparazzi students say they hate ratting out their neighbours, but the money is too good to resist.
“It’s shameful work — I’m really not proud of it,” said one student who declined to give her name.
Said another, who also asked to remain anonymous, “Let’s put it this way: I don’t want to be called a paparazzi; I’m a public servant.” Experts say South Koreans would rather look the other way when it comes to petty infractions.
“In Korean culture, we don’t want our neighbours spying on us,” said Park Heung-sik, public policy professor at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University.
“In elementary school, when a classmate reports on another’s bad behaviour, there’s bad blood. A student might get beat up. It’s the same with adults.” Paparazzi school administrators remain unapologetic. “The paparazzi critics are usually the ones who are breaking the law,” said Moon Sung-ok, head of Mismiz Report & Compensation School in Seoul. “The clean ones, the innocent citizens — they have no problems with us.” Shin Gi-woong, 38, once owned a sushi bar; now he runs Posang Club paparazzi school, with its logo featuring the cross hairs of a gun’s scope in the “o” of Posang. After “car-parazzi” he started nailing store owners selling outdated candy to children. He busted jewellers and pharmacists who didn’t give receipts (as required by law). He nabbed a political candidate for taking a free meal, also verboten.
Shin teaches that upholding the law is the important thing. “Money doesn’t come first,” he said.
But for Kim Rae-in, it’s all about the cash. Kim focuses on merchants who don’t offer receipts. He often uses a small video camera hidden inside a bag he keeps under his arm. He chooses his cases by instinct, doing Internet research on store sales volumes before hopping on his motorcycle each day. He sends a DVD of his evidence to the proper government agency and collects his cash in a few days.
“People don’t abide by the law anymore because they know there aren’t enough investigators,” he said. “That ’s why paparazzi emerged. These crooks get what they deserve.”
© The Washington Post