Mike Breen on Roh Probe

by Robert Koehler on April 20, 2009

I really like Mike Breen’s piece on the bribery investigation surrounding former President Roh Moo-hyun — not sure if I’d call Roh a “decent man,” but this investigation, and the nonsense surrounding it, could eventually backfire on Lee.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Railwaycharm April 20, 2009 at 2:02 pm: Sorry Mike, the moment you include the words Jimmy Carter and decent man in the same paragraph, your credibility sits at the bottom of a tar-pit.
2 gbnhj April 20, 2009 at 6:33 pm: Well, as I’m not the incumbent president, perhaps Breen won’t mind if I laugh at his suggestion that Roh is ‘good’.

I’m not sure whether Breen is speaking in terms of morals or ethics, or if he is trying to decribe Roh’s capabilities, but arguably he’s not very good with repect to any of these things. Indeed, considering that his corruption has been uncovered (if not in whole, at least in part), he’s not even good at being a crook.
3 SomeguyinKorea April 20, 2009 at 6:40 pm: #2,

He’s done enough without the corruption scandal to erase him of my list of ‘good guys’.
4 Won Joon Choe April 21, 2009 at 5:46 am: I like Breen’s op-eds usually but I am not so favorable to this one. Among other things, as several folks have mentioned, I have a serious problem with using the adjective “decent” to describe Roh.
5 mjw April 21, 2009 at 7:12 am: The debate about whether Roh is a good guy or not is a red herring.

Breen in this article is surprisingly naive and, yet more surprisingly, ill-informed. Take for instance his suggestion that the judiciary, thanks to Roh, is independent. However it might appear independent on paper, wishing it will not make it so. The judiciary is every bit as much a part of the living breathing political system as the National Assembly. Indeed, its role is all the more despicable because it has gotten some people for some reason to believe it is independent and neutral. Wake up.

The real problem is something Mike doesn’t get around to addressing until the very last line of the piece: revenge. What you are seeing today is 100% pure retribution for the persecution of the conservative political class for the 10 years that Roh and Kim were in power. Think about what was done to the scions of Japanese collaborators.

LMB is not necessarily pulling strings here, but he certainly cannot hold back the people who acting from behind his seat. This is a structural/systemic issue. If his administration does not go after the previous one, he will lose power from his base. That is the cold reality of Korean revenge politics. So, guess what’s going to happen to LMB when he leaves office?

Mike’s conclusion is right. But how he arrives at it is oddly out of character.