Koreagate
Amidst Watergate and every other shady thing happening during the “paranoid” seventies, it was easy to miss a 1976 influence-buying scandal that involved South Korea. During that year, it was revealed that a South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park had been bribing close to a dozen members of Congress. Park was allegedly connected to the South Korea’s intelligence agency, and the conspiracy was an effort to gin up support for the Asian country in the American government. In 1977, Park was hit with a fat stack of federal charges, including influence bribery and failure to register as a foreign agent, but his charges were dropped after he agreed to testify at federal grand juries that led to criminal charges against a number of congressmen.
