Paying Tribute to Korea's Democracy

Joined the endless queue of people awaited for paying tribute to now the deceased former president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun. After standing on the pedestrian road approximately three hours, finally the temporarily set altar appeared through the crowd. Strange mixture of emotions whipped around the people; overwhelming grief was interrupted by an occasional complaints towards surrounding riot police forces, and so did the tension rise. Strange enough, there were also a drop of festive mood; street musicians playing instruments of which sound deeply surmerged into saddened hearts of thousands of the crowd, tired from the hours of standing in a hot Indian summer night, fighting mosquitoes. Volunteers were busy cleaning up the area, maintaining an order, and delivering a cup of cold water, Kimbap and chrysanthemuns to the crowd. As the darkness came, people gradually lit up candles. The scene was peaceful and even beautiful to observe. Still though, on the way home, complaints politically charged and directly aiming at the crowd pierced through the air. Tension existed so did chances to communicate.


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May 26, 2009
South Korea’s President Faces Dual Crises
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea faced double crises on Monday as a North Korean nuclear test caught his government off-guard and he struggled to soothe political rancor over the suicide of his predecessor, Roh Moo-hyun.

In one of the biggest outpourings of national grief in years, the central and provincial governments and religious and civic groups opened 300 mourning centers across the country on Monday. Long lines of Cabinet ministers and ordinary citizens streamed into the centers to pay respects to Mr. Roh. About 180,000 mourners have journeyed to Mr. Roh’s rural home village of Bongha on the south coast alone.

The country’s major Web sites have posted a black-and-white photo of Mr. Roh and created special sections to permit hundreds of thousands of citizens to post their condolences.

The former president jumped off a cliff on Saturday as prosecutors investigated allegations that he and his family took $6.4 million from a businessman.

Many South Koreans said they believe that Mr. Roh, whether guilty or not, was driven to end his life because of relentless pressure from a politically motivated investigation orchestrated by the government of President Lee.

“He is the victim of the vicious circle of an incumbent president strengthening his political hand by relentlessly shaming and trampling on his predecessor in our country,” Yang Chun-shik, a 35-year-old office worker, said Monday, reflecting a common view shared by mourners interviewed Sunday and Monday.

Mr. Lee must decide whether to accept the Roh family’s wish to hold his funeral on Friday in central Seoul. That would certainly draw a huge crowd and could turn into an anti-government protest similar to demonstrations that crippled Mr. Lee’s government for weeks last summer.

In a sign of simmering tension, Mr. Roh’s supporters continued to turn away ruling-party lawmakers who travelled to Bongha to pay tribute.

As he struggled over how to prevent Mr. Roh’s funeral from developing into another crisis, Mr. Lee also faced the news Monday that North Korea had conducted its second nuclear test.

Earlier Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had expressed “profound condolences” to Mr. Roh’s widow, Kwon Yang-sook, but gave the Seoul government no hint of the nuclear test.

Mr. Roh, who sought reconciliation with North Korea while in office from 2003 to 2008, traveled to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in 2007 for a landmark summit with Mr. Kim. But inter-Korean ties chilled dramatically after Mr. Lee took office in February 2008, promising a tougher policy on the North.

Recriminations and Regrets Follow Suicide of South Korean President Roh

May 25, 2009
By MARTIN FACKLER
SEOUL, South Korea — As South Koreans laid white chrysanthemums at makeshift memorials for their former president, Roh Moo-hyun, many said Sunday that the once-popular champion of clean government had been driven to suicide by more than humiliating bribery allegations.

They directed much of their ire at the prosecutors and conservative media who relentlessly pursued the accusations of corruption against Mr. Roh and his family. Many accused the current president, Lee Myung-bak, of orchestrating the investigation, a move that could become a political liability for him.

Others expressed deeper misgivings that Mr. Roh was a victim of the legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian past — most notably the near ritual of incumbent presidents presiding over investigations of their predecessors.

“It has become a bad political habit for presidents in South Korea to try to gain support by punishing the former president,” said Kang Won-taek, a politics professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. “What happened to Roh Moo-hyun shows that it is time to break this habit.”

The tendency to define a presidency by the failings of the one that came before took root as the country struggled to redefine itself in the early 1990s as a young democracy after years of dictatorships. Many Koreans were exhilarated as the first democratically elected governments punished the men who had resisted democracy for so long.

The sight of former President Chun Doo-hwan — a military ruler blamed for a crackdown of pre-democracy protesters that ended in 200 deaths — being paraded in a prison jumpsuit proved cathartic for the nation.

But political experts, and even many average Koreans, say that their nation’s struggle to shed its authoritarian past was never finished, and that investigation of Mr. Roh highlighted at least two other legacies: a powerful presidency and a justice system with few checks and balances, especially on its prosecutors.

At least so far, the subject of Mr. Roh’s culpability has been put aside, overwhelmed by the shock and sadness over his dramatic death on Saturday, when he threw himself off a cliff. In the weeks before that, he acknowledged that a businessman who supported him had given more than $6 million to his wife and son and his brother’s son-in-law while he was in office, but he denied that they were bribes. He said he did not know about the transactions until he left office.

The money for his wife had been used to pay for his son’s tuition at Stanford University, among other things, according to a top aide. In a country where education is key to social status, Mr. Roh, a self-educated lawyer, never won full respect from many people, despite having become a lawyer and the leader of a powerful economy.

Much of the outpouring of public anger since Mr. Roh’s death has focused on the murky ties between the Blue House, as the president’s office is called, and the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, which led the investigation into Mr. Roh and other former presidents. These suspicions are also a hangover from the pre-democracy days, when prosecutors were seen as military henchmen, using the legal system to attack their political opponents.

“The prosecutors have become the most omnipotent force in Korean society today,” said Moon Chung-in, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul and former adviser to Mr. Roh. “Their strength is a legacy of dictatorship that still affects us.”

Mr. Moon said that Mr. Roh actually ended up strengthening the power of prosecutors by weakening one check on their power: the National Intelligence Service, the South Korean spy service used by military rulers against South Korea’s citizens. Mr. Roh appointed a former human rights lawyer as its director and curtailed many of its internal surveillance activities.

Mr. Roh also tried to rein in the prosecutors, but with less success. Though he weakened links between prosecutors and the Blue House, he failed to pass some of their powers to the police or create grand juries to oversee investigations.

In 2003, his first year in office, Mr. Roh also held a widely watched public debate with 10 prosecutors in which he called the prosecutors office a “powerful organization” that the Justice Ministry had “failed to rein in.”

Mr. Roh also came to office with promises to break the cycle of corruption that has plagued South Korean presidents, and made them vulnerable to investigation. He also vowed to curtail the powers of South Korea’s presidency and sever its links with the country’s “chaebol,” or big-business conglomerates.

Mr. Roh’s death unleashed a renewed wave of sympathy for a former president who had alienated many supporters by signing a free-trade agreement with the United States and seeming to bungle economic policy.

Many of the thousands who turned out at makeshift altars in front of an ancient palace in central Seoul seemed to feel that Mr. Roh had paid too high a price for a relatively petty infraction.

Many noted that Mr. Chun and his successor as president, Roh Tae-woo, were found guilty of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of bribes while in office. Sons of the first two civilian presidents of the era, Kim Young-san and Kim Dae-jung, were also imprisoned for pocketing millions of dollars from large companies.

The mourners lashed out at the prosecutors and the conservative media who had relentlessly pursued accusations of corruption for the past year, after Mr. Roh had left office. Most also accused the sitting president, Mr. Lee, of guiding or at least encouraging the investigations. In Mr. Roh’s native village, Bongha, his supporters trampled a funeral wreath sent by the president.

“President Roh was not just another corrupt president. He was different,” said Lee Dong-joon, 31, an insurance planner. “But Lee Myung-bak is acting the same as the dictators. Our democracy has been set back 30 years.”

The former president, who had prided himself on being above South Korea’s corruption, could no longer eat or focus on his favorite pastime of late-night reading, said aides. In his suicide note, Mr. Roh apologized for disappointing supporters.

Political scientists said the suicide could cause a backlash against President Lee or even the prosecutors. Mr. Moon, the former Roh adviser, said the National Assembly might formally investigate the prosecutors, and the apparent press leaks of questionable allegations, which increased the pressure on Mr. Roh.

“Let’s see if this breaks the cycle of political vendettas” against former presidents, Mr. Moon said. “But we won’t know for sure if the vendettas are over until 2012, when Lee Myung-bak steps down.” Some supporters who gathered in Seoul said they thought the opposite would happen: that Mr. Roh’s suicide almost guaranteed that the current president would also face similar attacks once he leaves office.

South Korea on Edge After Ex-President's Suicide

Woken up in a Saturday morning by a shocking news of a former leader's death, people in this country still find difficult to realize he is truly gone. We are still in awe and speechless for the great loss we have. The whole country is turned into an enormous mourning place, where no one is able to find words to describe the deepest sorrow of loosing a leader who they elected with their own hands and also now about to bury. State of awe continues, Korea is submerged with the silence.

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May 25, 2009

By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL — Thousands of South Koreans — some holding the hands of children, some shouting anti-government slogans, all carrying white chrysanthemums — flocked to central Seoul on Sunday to bid farewell to former President Roh Moo-hyun, who committed suicide Saturday.

In a country where even the most prominent political leaders have faced corruption charges in recent decades, Mr. Roh, 62, was the first to end his own life while under investigation. For both his supporters and detractors, his suicide served as a painful reminder of how difficult it remained to break the chain of graft in South Korean society.

“We are sorry we failed to protect you,” read many of the numerous yellow ribbons near the ancient Deoksu Palace in Seoul, hung by people who believed Mr. Roh was the victim of political vendetta from his successor, President Lee Myung-bak. “We will remember you forever. History will know that you were the cleanest president we ever had,” others said.

Before dawn Saturday, Mr. Roh switched on his computer and typed a suicide note — his last comment on a corruption scandal that threatened to undo his proudest legacy: his record as an upstanding political leader.

“Don’t be too sad,” Mr. Roh said in the note, meant for his wife and two children. “Life and death are all parts of nature. Don’t be sorry. Don’t blame anyone. Accept it as fate.”

An hour and a half later, as the sun rose through a cloudy sky, Mr. Roh climbed a hill overlooking his native village of Bongha, on the south coast, and jumped off a cliff.

On Sunday, South Koreans across the country lined up — for hours under drizzling rain in some places — to pay respect at temporary mourning altars set up in the retirement village of Bongha.

Central Seoul was thick with police officers in full riot gear, a sign that Mr. Roh, even after death, remained a volatile figure.

On Sunday, the government and Mr. Roh’s family agreed to hold a state “people’s funeral” Friday.

But tension also simmered as Mr. Roh’s suicide threatened to deepen a political divide. His supporters trampled on a funeral wreath donated by his successor, President Lee Myung-bak, and turned away his deputy, Prime Minister Han Seung-soo, who came to pay tribute at Bongha.

Past midnight Sunday, young people holding candles still stood in lines hundreds of meters long and snaking around the Deoksu Palace. People signed a petition calling on Parliament to impeach Mr. Lee for “murder.” Police buses surrounding the mourning site were plastered with paper messages denouncing Mr. Lee and prosecutors.

In his last months, Mr. Roh, who was president from 2003 to 2008, had seen his personal achievements clouded by accusations of corruption and many of his political accomplishments undone.

The corruption charges faced by Mr. Roh’s family were minor compared with those that had discredited some of his predecessors, who had collected massive sums from the nation’s top conglomerates. But prosecutors, long accused of taking orders from whomever is in power, aggressively went after Mr. Roh, leaking details of their investigation to the media. Mr. Roh killed himself a day before his wife, Kwon Yang-sook, was expected to be summoned for questioning for a second time.

“He was driven to kill himself for taking some money from a long-time supporter, while those who robbed big businesses of truckloads of cash are still alive without shame,” said Choi Chul-kyu, a 48-year-old mourner holding a candle, referring to former conservative political leaders convicted of bribery. “How am I going to explain this to my children? How am I going to explain the fact that every president in this country has wanted to squash his predecessor?”

But those who were close to Mr. Roh said the charges were especially painful because he had made his name as a “clean” politician, refusing to follow in the path of his predecessors; every former South Korean president since the 1980s has faced corruption accusations or gone to prison on such charges after his term was over.

In recent weeks, Mr. Roh acknowledged that a little-known businessman who supported him had given more than $6 million to his wife and son and his brother’s son-in-law while he was in office, but he denied the payments were bribes. He said that he did not know about the transactions until he left office and that the money for his wife went to pay a debt.

While in office, Mr. Roh survived an impeachment and even confessed to being “sick and tired of being president.” But masked by such frankness and feistiness was a sensitive leader who took criticism personally, engaged in a vicious, prolonged battle with the nation’s conservative media, and appeared to consider real-life politics, which haunted him even in retirement, too messy for his character and too much to take.

“There was not a single quiet day while he was in office,” said Choi Jin, head of the Institute of Presidential Leadership. “Throughout his life, he always made extreme choices, playing an all-or-nothing game. His suicide was the last explosion in his fiery and volcanic career.”



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