Jeremy Bentham, the British utilitarian philosopher who championed "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," proposed an innovative prison design called the Panopticon to British authorities in the late 1780s. Cells were to be arranged in a circle inside a cylindrical building, with a watchtower at the center. Light would shine into the cells while the area around the tower remained dark. A handful of guards could easily observe the inmates, who in turn could not see inside the tower. The design embodied an Enlightenment philosophy: prisoners who believed they were always being watched would follow the rules and reform themselves.
Contrary to Bentham's benign intentions, the Panopticon came to serve in literature as a metaphor for systems of control that suppress individual freedom. The most prominent example is French philosopher Michel Foucault's 1975 book "Discipline and Punish," which read the Panopticon as the model of the modern surveillance regime. One of the detention facilities where the heroes of the Hollywood "Guardians of the Galaxy" films are held is also said to have drawn its design from the Panopticon.
Choi Gil-soo, who was recently appointed special inspector by President Lee Jae-myung, made a public pledge on his first day at work on the 26th: "I want the special inspector's office to be something like a Panopticon, keeping its eyes wide open to watch those subject to inspection." The special inspector is tasked with monitoring misconduct by the president's relatives and by presidential office officials at or above the rank of senior secretary. The post was originally created in 2014 under the Park Geun-hye administration, but after the first special inspector, Lee Seok-soo, resigned two years later, no successor was named through the Moon Jae-in and Yoon Suk-yeol administrations.
Now that a special inspector has been appointed for the first time in a decade, the public expects the office to serve faithfully as a watchdog against corruption by the powerful, as the system was originally intended. Yet the office also carries the risk of being misused to monitor and control even aides who speak uncomfortable truths. Like the Panopticon, which holds within it both enlightenment and oppression, the special inspector must constantly reflect on the light and the shadow of investigative power.