South Korea's society is hardly a stranger to corruption, which seems to have been the inevitable accompaniment to the south Asian country's meteoric rise to industrial power in the 1980s. But even for the shock-hardened South Koreans, the events of the past few months have been something of an eye-opener.
President Kim Young-sam's son, Mr Kim Hyun-chul, is on trial accused of taking $7.4 million from six businessmen, at least half of which amount was directly related to granting specific favours. The President himself is increasingly being painted into a corner over the sources of his campaign funds in 1992.
Ironically enough, when Kim Young-sam took office in February 1993 as the first civilian president after more than 30 years of military-dominated politics, he pledged to root out official corruption. But the kickback plant was much hardier than the efforts of one new administration.
Last year a triumvirate of former powerful South Koreans, including two former presidents, had to suffer the indignity of court appearances in handcuffs and prison blues before being found guilty of accepting huge bribes in the 1980s.
The sums then were in the millions of dollars, amounts rendered astronomical when converted to their original Korean form (the Korean won is valued at around 1,500 to the pound.)
That was a salutary experience for South Korea's mostly honest 44 million people. And, in the context of the reported famine in North Korea, it seemed all the more distasteful that only across a line on a map, corrupt officials were raking in astronomical sums so that they could live in luxury.
But if anybody had thought the jailing of the former presidents was the start of a new "clean" era in South Korean politics, they would have been sadly mistaken. South Korea has started "afresh" before, with the same sorry ending.
In the middle of last month a senior aide to President Kim, Mr Kang Sang-il, resigned after press allegations that he had passed on around one billion won (about £660,000) from a prominent businessman to Mr Kim Hyunchul.
Mr Kim, the 64-year-old President's second son, is standing trial for bribery and tax evasion. State prosecutors accused him of personally taking kickbacks totalling 3.22 billion won (£2.25 million) and evading taxes of £925,000.
Kim Hyun-chul's arrest last May dealt a serious blow to the credibility of his father, who has been reduced to a lame-duck leader in the run-up to presidential elections which take place in December, although he actually remains in office until next February. The President is barred by the constitution from seeking re-election.
Opposition parties have alleged that Kim Hyun-chul is also the main player behind South Korea's massive financial scandal earlier this year, involving the failed Hanbo Steel Company. The steel-maker collapsed in January under massive loans, revealing dubious alliances among politicians, bankers and businessmen.
In June the founder of Hanbo, key presidential aides, politicians and top bankers were jailed for their roles in the Hanbo scandal.
South Korean prosecutors have cleared Kim Hyun-chul of any wrongdoing in the Hanbo affair, but have indicted him for accepting money in return for favours to businessmen in connection with cable television deals and a road-building contract.
The possibility looms that Kim Young-sam himself might be subject to sticky charges if rumours washing around about his election funding bear fruit.
The allegations, veiled and otherwise, are that his vote-forme fund included large sums from business, including a tranche from the ill-fated Hanbo chaebol.
With commendable sang-froid for a man in such a position, President Kim in late May was telling his questioners that, desirable though it might be to give the details of his funding, there were no extant files "which could reveal the whole picture". What the Koreans obviously need is a dogged bunch of trusties such as those who tracked the peripatetic Dunne payments.
But what is more pressing for Korean lawmakers is how effective any court appearances for Kim Chyun-hul or his father can be. Shocking as it was to hear the guilty verdicts brought down on former heads of society Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo in 1996, and their subsequent sentencing to hard labour, it was accepted even at the time that various commutations and fudges would mean that the men never actually served hard sentences.
The way in which society, not just Korean society, views financial crimes is an underlying problem for any individual or commission charged with cleaning up the Augean stables. As one commentator wrote recently of the spate of sleaze in British politics, most women would prefer that their husbands had accepted a dodgy weekend at a fancy hotel or a brown envelope full of money to having a potentially family-busting affair.
There is the sense of righteous indignation felt by the ordinary taxpayer at the way of those who get themselves into a section of society where money talks and walks. But there is also a niggling envy, and a capitalist benediction of getting what you can grab.
In a society like South Korea, the pursuit of wealth was seen as an absolute good in the late 1960s and 1970s. This "wealth" was, in individual terms, very modest initially, but relative wealth for a poor Asian nation which had emerged from decades of occupation by Japan only to be wracked by the intra-peninsular war at the start of the 1950s.
Then, in an escalation which can only be called Thatcherite, the race got faster as the rewards grew bigger, and the importance of getting construction contracts and factory-site permission became ever more crucial.
But that corruption trail is bordered by deep-rooted pernicious plants dangerous to the morality of a successful society.