Charity, D.C. Style

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KORUSEC has been a financial boon for Buckham's firm. Although the law strictly limits how much a charity may spend on lobbying, KORUSEC's filings with the Internal Revenue Service indicate it pays Buckham's Alexander Strategy Group $5,000 a month in rent for a Georgetown office where repeated calls by TIME were answered only by a machine featuring the voice of a long-departed executive director. In addition, one of Kim's subsidiaries--Universal Bearings Inc., a manufacturer in Indiana--has paid Buckham's firm $600,000 since 2001 for what its federal filing describes as lobbying "on the strong political, economic and security relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States."

Republican lobbyists were not the only ones to get KORUSEC's business. Buckham brought in as a "strategic partner" a Democratic firm called the Harbour Group, which charged KORUSEC $150,456 in 2002 and 2003. Lobbyist Joel Johnson--a former Clinton White House official who has since moved from Harbour to the Glover Park Group and taken the KORUSEC account with him--says he was hired "to recruit Democrats to go on trips." He insists, however, that the excursions were serious endeavors with briefings by Korean officials and a trip to the demilitarized zone. As for elevating Kim's image with the delegations, Johnson insists, "It was never the purpose ever stated to me." In the meantime, defining exactly what charity is, and how it should be bestowed, has become Washington's latest investigative mission. --With reporting by Donald Macintyre/ Seoul and Mark Thompson/Washington