If (and there are lots of ‘ifs’ right now) Roh’s apparent suicide was done deliberately rather than in a fit of depression, it has achieved at least one goal. The investigation into Roh and his family for bribery has been called off. Also, Roh’s supporters and the left are already trying to whip up a backlash against the Lee Myung-bak administration.
For his part, Lee has offered condolences to Roh’s family.
The last state funeral was for Choi Kyu-hah. Choi served as president in 1979 and 1980 before being forced out by Chun Doo-hwan. The last state funeral before that was for 17 government officials killed in a North Korean bombing in 1983.
I suspect that VP Joe Biden will be coming to the funeral considering the closeness of the USA-ROK alliance. I am sure the somebody in the White House is consulting the protocol droids over in the State Department about it right about now.
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually, the source you quote says that ‘an investigation into ex-President Roh Moo-hyun would end’, but falls short of saying the same for other parties.
State funerals shouldn’t be held for crooks. And it ties up traffic.
And the investigation should be continued.
Easy out. Wife, family and colleagues left holding the bag.
A bag full of cash and real estate in Florida. He was a politician. Not necessarily a hero. For the little good a modern day politicocrook will do to cover his ass with joeschuckatelli, why consider dropping the investigations? Are the rest of his partners in crime just innocent babes?
He was probably suffering from depression. How could he not have been?
If anything positive comes of it, I hope that it will make electors far more responsible during elections. Don’t they see right through the politically motivated investigations, such as the one that was his downfall and the ones his own government undertook when it got in power?
Feeling the local fallout here in Busan:
Some of my close friends are musicians and bar owners, so typically have leftist leanings. They are completely sullen tonight as they are lamenting Roh as a “great man”. It’s all I can do to keep from vomiting.
Out of respect for my friends’ feelings, I have to bite my tongue as I totally want to unleash how much I hated Roh and how bad he was at being president.
Our band and several others had shows planned tonight at our friends’ bars, but they were all cancelled by the bar owners out of respect for Roh.
F***, F***, F***!!!
Roh’s final f*** you was to f*** my band up!
Thanks!
A man’s dead and you’re upset because you’ve had your band night canceled.
Please, God, don’t let them let Biden speak.
A man’s dead and you’re using it as an excuse to poke away at Joe Biden.
That’ll be my last comment of that sort, but commenters, where’s the moment of silence, the respect for life, the temporary putting aside of partisan hostilities?
On Christmas Day, even the guns of WWI fell silent.
NathanB, I hated the man for his ridiculous incompetence.
I’m mad that good friends of mine are hailing him as a “great man” when all he did was talk about the ideals most of us normal people think are good things. All he did was TALK!
In the end, when he achieved power, all he did was f*** up!
And the final spur in my side is that a great time a large group of us had planned tonight was cancelled because this a$$clown decided to jump off a cliff this morning. F***!!!
All right, here it is- the guy was an anti-American, North Korean stooge who did everything he could to appease the murderous North Korean dicatorship. He pretty much bungled everything during his administration while continually threatening to resign due his own admission that he was “not fit for the job”. He was totally incompetent and it saddens me to see my friends to so sadly lament him as a “great man”!
stay classy expat
I tend to agree with Benny there.
Tragic? Tragic would be if he had been hit by a bus.
This is just… sordid.
A man’s dead, and I’m upset he beat “W” to it.
“partisan hostilities”
Ironically, it would probably be difficult for most people to decide who was/is the worse president, Lee or Roh.
“W” won’t do it until Cheney tells him to.
All politicians are liars. It’s part of the job description and we really can’t hold them to unreasonable standards in that regard. When a politician strays from the dirty and inexact business of cutting deals and compromise with nasty people like Kim Jong Il or “W” and instead fixates on Principles, if they take it to extremes they are straying into the realm or ideologues like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Perhaps Roh operated on principles to a greater extent than any other Korean president, but he was no totalitarian thug. However, his fixation on principles may have cornered him into the final solution. Where a standard politician would have rode out the investigations, maybe spend a month in jail (probably wouldn’t even come to that), and come out the other side to finish their lucrative VIP life, he apparently couldn’t handle it. With the far reaching global sized challenges facing the world we definitely need more principled leaders in the world. But they, and their constituencies must understand the need to balance principles with politics. Bribery, tax evasion and campaign fundraising cheating in politics is pretty standard fare. Even a fairly principled leader like Obama came into office with these kind of scandals surrounding him. Politicians cannot get away from them. Unless the figures are big, it really doesn’t matter to the big picture of a nation’s health and prosperity. Roh’s principled approach to leadership will be what he is remembered for, punctuated by his choice to die as a martyr.
Lee Myung-bak is in really big trouble now. Hopefully, when the smoke clears something good will come of this.
“On Christmas Day, even the guns of WWI fell silent.”
Yes, cite that extremely rare and odd occurrence . Right now, decent, hard-working people are dying every day in wars (mostly innocent civilians) all over this world due the same type of greed that led this man to off himself (Darfur, the Taliban, narco-traffickers/crooked cops in Mexico, religious fanatics in the Middle East, etc.). Those are who you should be holding a real moment of silence for, or even better try to do something about it.
This man that so many people are shedding a tear for here actually made it easier for the neighbors to the North to kill them with their, now operational, nuclear arsenal. Where was that “respect for life” for his own countrymen? Even in death, he’s made life miserable for many here as they now have to put up with the fallout of his selfish way out for the foreseeable future.
Benicio74,
Last night, for whatever reason, was the first Saturday night I hung out with only foreigners in a very long time, for whatever reason. I’m kind of glad that no Korean friends came out, as I’m not that far from Gimhae and really would have had trouble keeping my mouth shut about this man who’s just a fool on so many levels. I just hope that people down here learn from his example instead of following it, and aren’t stupid enough to turn him into a martyr.
And to think all the guy had to do was hang out in a remote temple for six months…
It was his own hubris that pushed his decision to jump.
Had he not been so full of his own pride, he would have just ridden out the storm like every other crooked politician.
My feelings about him are not based on the fact that he took money. They’re based on the fact that he turned out to be such a ridiculous hypocrite and that he was such a terrible president that did far more to hurt Korea than to help it.
When faced with the serious failure that he had become, instead of being a man and trying to right some wrong, he took the coward’s way out and offed himself.
He is already being turned into a martyr!
A hero in my eyes….
having lived in Korea, for 3 years of my life (not there now) I feel compelled to add to this blog… this was not an act of depression this was a heroic statement and part of his destiny… Roh’s suicide is the birth of a new Korean democracy..yes i understand what some are saying about the message suicide shows to the youth.. and what some others say about it being a weakness and a way out. In most cases with suicide I would say that to be true… but this is different…. so where am I going with this…?
Think about it Roh came from the student left, he was in jail once for his extreme anti government views, without a doubt he was an honest non-corrupt individual… this wasn’t corruption money, this is typical political games and trickery… the money came from one of his close friends and was for his family not political gains… no different to donations etc made in the west… the ruling party, wanted revenge, for showing so many of the elite up during Roh’s time in power , and in the end revenge they got it…
but as John Nash (A beautiful mind) migh have said there is no winner with “revenge”…
this is not a win for the ruling party and will ultimately act towards their demise.. this suicide what might initially look like a weakness and an admitting of guilt is actually not at all… its Roh’s destiny to make the ordinary Korean think about this at a deeper level.. Roh’s arrest/scandal etc. made many koreans loose faith in the one they trusted to reform democracy.. although the scandal is initially a shock nothing so dramatic and the with the power of the ruling party to influence the media the story is told that… he was hypocrite and over time all but a few of his supporters are left…
but this moment in time when the news breaks of Roh’s suicide in the land of the morning calm, the country stops, in their tracks and are forced to ask a deeper question…. “WHY?” the answer is simple and obvious he did it to show the people of Korea just how deep the issue of corruption and how unfair (inhuman even) that sword goes… He was ultimately killed by the thing that he fought against… although his death should not be seen as a failure but as an ultimate statement for the cause… That moment in time, when the clocks stopped in Korea and the people saw the truth…(even if its not obvious just yet).. the true aftermath will be that the ordinary person in Korean will be much better of for it….
So long President Roh
Lexzicon
“Roh’s suicide is the birth of a new Korean democracy”…
That’s what I initially hoped…but I’m not so sure anymore.
http://www.kingbaeksu.com/bbs/view.php?id=bug&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=1529
Yeah “lex”, consider this or this or this before you wax eloquently. I will bet you that there is much that is yet to be revealed about Roh’s tenure in office and I wonder if any of it will ever come to light.
Unfortunately, the human mob ain’t deep at all.
Shaking down a political supporter for money to buy your kids a luxury apartment in Manhattan isn’t corrupt? Roh was small-scale model of the Suharto family, who skimmed an estimated 6% of the national economy to amass fortunes.
Presidents and losing candidates do pass around hats to collect donations to pay off campaign debt and occasionally such funds are misused, for example, to persuade ex-mistresses that silence is golden. I don’t know of any US politician who bought a home with donor money.
“… the money came from one of his close friends and was for his family not political gains…”
To put things in perspective for you…
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090520/national/mulroney_schreiber?printer=1
PS. He had already left politics when he accepted the cash.
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