Discovering Steve Magness's Story
I first came across the writer Steve Magness years ago, when our reading group at Studian read his book <Do Hard Things>. But it was only recently, while reading his latest release, <Win The Inside Game>, that I learned something striking about his own past: while working as a coach for the Nike Oregon Project, one of the world's top professional running teams, he was instructed to administer banned substances. After much soul-searching, he ultimately reported the matter to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)—a decision that led to ten grueling years of consequences for him. In the book, he recounts filing his report in December 2012, and notes that the case was not finally resolved until 2022, when USADA handed down four-year suspensions to his former boss, Alberto Salazar, and the team physician, Dr. Jeffrey Brown.
Reading that passage, what struck me most
was how universal the whistleblower's ordeal seems to be, regardless of
nationality. It was remarkable that although the report was filed in 2012, the
process did not conclude until a full decade later, in 2022. Had this happened
in Korea, I suspect the story would likely have played out with the
whistleblower going to the press to say that life only got harder after coming
forward. I take a particular interest in whistleblowers' experiences because,
as an attorney, representing them has been part of my own practice.
Lessons from My Own Practice
I spent four years serving as an advisory
attorney for the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission's anonymous-proxy
reporting program. Over that period, among the many cases I handled, a fair
number involved matters that could fairly be called whistleblowing. Some
proceeded to an actual report being filed; others ended at the consultation
stage. Among the cases where a report was filed, there was even an instance in
which the client submitted the report and then ultimately withdrew it. The
reason was that the individual, despite reporting the company, still wished to
continue working there. Once the report was filed, a tangle of emotions set
in—guilt toward the company, and a sense of having betrayed colleagues—and in
the end, the client chose to withdraw the report and remain at the company.
Fortunately, because it typically takes considerable time before the relevant
authority opens a formal investigation, the withdrawal was completed before the
company became aware of it, allowing that person to continue working there
without incident.
The Limits of Legal Protection
This illustrates just how difficult a process whistleblowing truly is. Korea does have the Public Interest Whistleblower Protection Act, designed to protect those who come forward, but in practice this protection tends to operate after the fact rather than before it. The mere existence of a statute does not stop a company from retaliating against a whistleblower in the first place. Under the current legal structure, a company can go ahead and take retaliatory action, and only afterward face sanctions for violating the law.
For those who fall outside the scope of
this protection, whistleblowing becomes even harder. In an earlier Brunch post,
I discussed why it is so difficult for employees of the National Election
Commission to blow the whistle. I once came across an article mentioning that
NEC staff are covered by insurance, but as far as I could tell, that coverage
appears to apply only to lawsuits brought against them from outside the
organization over allegations of election fraud—it does not appear to extend to
protecting an employee who exposes wrongdoing within the NEC and, as a result,
faces retaliation or litigation from the Commission itself. If that reading is
correct, then NEC employees have even less incentive to blow the whistle unless
they are acting purely out of a sense of public duty.
The Gap Between Moral Judgment and Lived Reality
For this reason, whenever I see social-media comments demanding that insiders "just blow the whistle" whenever some scandal breaks, I often find myself wondering whether the person writing that comment would actually do the same if placed in that exact situation. My guess is that most people, faced with the reality of it, would not go through with it. Ironically, the people quickest to hold others to a moral standard and demand a particular course of action are often the very ones who rationalize their way out of it the moment the same demand is turned on them. And yet, when I look at the people who do go through with whistleblowing, many of them have already taken steps beforehand to avoid financial hardship—lining up another job, for instance, before ever stepping away from their current one. Blowing the whistle without any such preparation can end up putting one's entire livelihood at risk, which is why I myself do not actively encourage the clients who come to me for consultation to go ahead and report.Perhaps this is exactly why, when Steve Magness was weighing whether to come forward, his friends, his lawyer, and even a well-respected American judge all advised him against it. As he tells it, he was warned that speaking up was the right thing to do, but that whistleblowers almost never come out ahead, and that he risked derailing his career before it had even properly begun. If that is the reality even in the United States, I can only imagine it is harder still in Korea. This is precisely why I have such deep respect for those who choose to blow the whistle while still embedded within their organizations—and why I believe our society ought to do everything it can to protect them. In many respects, these individuals show a stronger sense of justice than even those of us in the legal profession.
Copyright ⓒ 2026 Mecklin Kim. All rights reserved.
