Scandal to Depress Liberal Movement

Former President Roh Moo-hyun shows mixed expressions in a sign of regret at his home in Bongha Village in South Gyeongsang Province Thursday, just before he left for the prosecution office in Seoul. / Yonhap

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Staff Reporter

Former President Roh Moo-hyun rose to power in 2003 thanks to his eloquence, down-to-earth personality and popularity. He even enjoyed quite a bit post-presidency favoritism until his standards of ethics became apparent.

Praise for Mr. Transparency has been short-lived. Roh's trademark of ethical leadership has been damaged after the emergence of evidence supporting that he allegedly took bribes from a businessman whom he called a friend.

A self-proclaimed clean leader, Roh became the third former president to undergo investigation by the prosecution, following his predecessors, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, in late 1995.

Amid media frenzy, Roh Moo-hyun expressed regret in a terse statement Thursday in his hometown Bongha, South Gyeongsang Province, before departure for Seoul, saying he was sorry for disappointing the people.

A star politician, Roh took a moment before stepping onto a bus heading for Seoul, and turned back to wave one hand to a swarm of his supporters who had been there for hours.

Those supporters still consider the eloquent Roh their hero. However, few would question that Roh's support base has become thinner.

The human rights lawyer-turned-president had humble origins. His parents had five children ― three sons and two daughters ― and Roh was the youngest.

When Roh was born, the seven Rohs lived in Bongha to where he returned after retirement in February last year. The small town once used to be portrayed as a rural area which was so impoverished that, local people say, even crows left because no food was available there.

After graduating from a high school in Busan, Roh worked during the daytime and studied at night to prepare for the state bar exam. After years of hard work, he passed the extremely demanding test, which is still notorious for frustrating many smart elite college students and graduates, in 1975.

He practiced law as a human rights lawyer in 1978 during the authoritarian Park Chung-hee administration. Eloquence had become his weapon and he defended many pro-democracy activists and students who were labeled ``communists" under the Chun Doo-hwan government, which resorted to red scares to keep their tight control over society.

Political analysts say Roh knows how the choice of powerful words work.

He began his political career in 1988 as an opposition party lawmaker and debuted as a star politician through parliamentary hearings aimed at uncovering the wrongdoings that occurred under former President Chun Doo-hwan, who took power in a 1979 military coup after the assassination of Park.

After several challenging years, Roh had a dramatic win in the now-defunct New Millennium Democratic Party's primaries to pick a presidential candidate in 2002 and the triumph paved the way for his presidency.

In his acceptance speech at the then-ruling party primaries, Roh called on the people to join hands to make the community's dream come true.

``I encourage all Koreans to join our efforts to build a new nation that can make sure honest and hard work pay off, and values such as fairness and justice can lead us to take a short cut to success,'' he said.

Roh served an uneasy presidency for he suffered the first-ever impeachment campaign led by opposition parties in 2004.

Many political scientists lauded his presidency for transparency until his friend, a businessman, confessed that Roh solicited bribes and that he offered them.

[출처 : 코리아타임스]