The Enemy Within

A woman touches a portrait of former President Roh Moo-hyun at Jogyesa temple in Seoul Sunday. Thousands streamed to Roh’s rural village to pay their respects to the ex-head of state a day after he killed himself by jumping off a rocky cliff overlooking his home. / AP-Yonhap

By Solomon Hakim

Korea is quite a funny country. Turn on the TV you see people everywhere mourning for former President Roh Moo-hyun like he was a close relative.

In most city centers, vigils have been set up so that people can come and pay their respects. Indeed, this country is quite funny!

Have you ever seen a country where the majority of the people, the actual perpetrators of a crime, are somehow acting like victims themselves and grieving the death of the man they murdered?

Roh is dead now because it was the majority of you Koreans who killed him! Now, he doesn't need your hypocritical mourning and eulogizing. All of your tears, faked or real, do not matter anymore! Rather, he needed your sympathies and support when he was alive!

But you couldn't understand that then, could you? What did all of you Koreans ― who now cry for him ― do for him when he was alive? How did you help him to enact the policies he sought and the platform he promised to deliver?

Besides the small group of Nosamo, the fervent Roh supporters and some others, what on earth did the Korean people do for the leader that they grieve for now, when it could have actually made a difference?

Roh was an absolute visionary, a progressive visionary apparently well ahead of his time. He was the first Korean leader to establish an official panel to look at, and judge, in a meaningful way Koreans who financially benefited from the illegal and disgusting Japanese occupation of Korea, yet you didn't appreciate that enough!

He continued to engage North Korea through former President's Kim Dae-jung's brilliant Sunshine Policy in a way that could have made a huge difference in inter-Korean relations, both politically, economically, and perhaps most importantly, for the human rights of North Koreans.

Unluckily for him, Bush Jr. was the U.S. president at the time and essentially killed the Sunshine Policy. And besides, most of you Koreans utterly failed to appreciate it, and always complained about it.

Have you ever even once thought about criticizing the more than 50-year-old policy of aggression the South has taken? What has that policy achieved?

Roh was the first Korean leader to establish real human rights for international couples and their offspring, relieving the absolutely woeful conditions of long time foreign residents, men and women, who were always stigmatized by this deeply racist society, but even that you didn't appreciate enough.

This is especially ironic considering the way you embraced and celebrated NFL star player Hines Ward, when everybody knows that had his mother stayed in Korea, he probably would have ended up a simple and poor laborer.

These issues are inextricably related to Roh's untimely death. He left office with a popularity rating in the low teens! Why? Because the Korean economy wasn't as good as you would have liked?

That is simply the nature of capitalism ― ups and downs! You only want to play the game if you win. Well, that is not life! And ask yourselves this question: Has the current conservative President in the Blue House, Lee Myung-bak, done any better of a job, when it comes to the economy, than his predecessor?

Why don't you equally criticize Lee like you did Roh? And what happened to Lee's economic promises? The truth is, he has failed to deliver on even a single promise!

It is ironic that in just a few months Lee has destroyed 10 long years of goodwill toward North Korea, yet is increasingly causing this country to behave more like the North with his iron-fisted rule!

Why don't you talk about the way he sucked up to Bush, like a little restless puppy, over the American beef/mad cow disease issue? Or for God's sake, how the police took down the vigil tent in Seoul on Saturday, not even allowing people to mourn Roh's death! Is this country a democracy or not?

Or what about the case of his wife shielding their son from compulsory military service? What about the appalling case of ``Minerva," a common man who simply posted accurate and dead-on forecasts on blogs of the coming financial mess?

Doesn't he have the right to speak? His arrest is something we might expect in Myanmar (Burma) or North Korea, but here in South Korea? Give a big thanks to Lee for that!

All of this proves once again that people get the leaders and system they deserve! It is the majority of Koreans who killed Roh! While Roh is now stuffed, forever silent, in his casket, Lee and the former Korean dictators, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, are laughing all the way to the bank with all the money they stole from the people!

If you want to know why good people always lose in this country, why this country is always in such tragedy, just take a look in the mirror! It is you who are the enemy!

Solomon Hakim is a freelance writer and permanent Korea resident. The views expressed in the above article are those of the author and do not reflect the editorial policy of The Korea Times. He can be reached at solomon.korea@gmail.com.

[출처 : 코리아타임스]