Roh Moo-hyun Dead

Roh Moo-huyn

Ex-President of South Korea
(Image from SBS News)

As everyone is doubtless already aware, Ex-President Roh Moo-hyun commited suicide yesterday by leaping from the 30-meter-high Owl Cliff on Mt. Bongha near his home in the village of Bongha, which lies in the southeast of Korea not far from Busan. Apparently, he jumped around 6:40 in the morning, was taken to Seyoung Hospital by 7:00, was tranferred to Pusan National University Hospital by 8:13, and was pronounced dead a little over an hour later, around 9:30.

My wife was checking the news on her computer around 9:45 and saw a rumor of Roh's death by suicide but found nothing certain. I suggested that we turn on the televised news, and after convincing En-Uk that Saturday morning cartoons on the Disney Channel were not the most important thing at the moment, we switched channels and watched early reports of Roh's death on national news. Since I needed English-language news, I went to the Marmot's blog and saw that an entry had been posted at 9:50, so I left a message at 9:54 asking for details, then another at the updated blog entry at 10:49 to inform others that the online reports seen by my wife had mentioned the strong possibility of suicide and that the televised news was reporting a suicide note.

That all turned out to be true, and Sonagi has employed her Korean expertise to post an entry at the Marmot's blog offering an English translation of Roh's suicide note:

I am indebted to so many people.
A lot of people have suffered because of me.
I can't fathom their suffering more in the future.
The rest of my life will only be a burden.
I can't do anything because of my poor health. I can't even read or write anything.
Don't be too sad. Life and death are naturally one.
Don't be sorry. Don't hold grudges against anyone. It's fate. Cremate me and erect a small gravestone near my home. I've thought about this for a long time.

Since he says that he had "thought about this for a long time," I guess that he was the only one not surprised by his suicide, but in retrospect, this fatal decision was predictable, for a lot of prominent Koreans who lose face commit suicide, and Roh was under investigation for corruption -- a mortal blow to his image as Mr. Incorruptible.

According to Robert Koehler, host of the Marmot's blog, "Roh apparently asked his bodyguard Lee Byeong-choon for a smoke right before he jumped." Somehow, perhaps because this was the last personal contact sought out by Roh -- privately soliciting a smoke for a penultimate moment of quiet reflection -- that final request personalizes his death for me.

I wonder what he was thinking in that moment. That he'd failed as a statesman and as a person? If I'd been there on that precipice and privy to his thoughts, I'd have asked him if he really wished to cap his failures with the ultimate admission of defeat. Despite his suicide note, this last step into history wasn't fate. Roh could have chosen to go on living and thereby face his problems with dignity. And who knows how he might have been judged in ten or twenty years? Even Richard Nixon, a far more corrupt politician, eventually achieved the standing of elder statesman.

I feel sorry for his family and friends, and I also feel sorry for South Korea. I can't feel especially sorry for Roh because he left family and friends behind to clean up his mess, but this death is tragic, and I do feel sad about that.

Anyway, rest in peace, Roh Moo-hyun.

UPDATE: The guard has altered his story a couple of times, once saying that he left Roh to accompany a hiker down the mountain path but now saying that Roh asked him to see if the local Buddhist monk was in the mountain temple, so the entire truth might be yet to emerge.

Won Joon Choe on Korean Politics

Roh Moo-hyun

Asking for trouble . . .

. . . and he got it!

(Image from BBC)

The photo above comes from Kate McGeown's article "Raking over S Korea's colonial past," which appeard in the BBC News Online five years ago (August 19, 2004), when Roh (pronounced "Noh") was president of Korea and pressing for "investigations into the widespread collaboration which took place during colonial rule, and the repression of the military regimes which followed." President Roh insisted that "those whose ancestors collaborated with the colonial power -- or with the military governments in the 1960s -- must not face punishment." His critics retorted that Roh's proposal had "little to do with recording an accurate version of Korea's past -- and much more to do with discrediting his opponents." Roh's Uri (pronounced "ou-ree") party rejected the accusation, but one early consequence showed -- albeit ironically -- that the critics were right about the potential for Korea's past to discredit individuals today:

The chairman of the Uri Party, Shin Ki-nam, resigned on Thursday [August 19, 2004], becoming the first casualty of the campaign.

An enthusiastic supporter of Mr Roh's plan to investigate collaborators, Mr Shin even backed the setting-up of committees to name and shame those who worked for the Japanese.

When it was revealed that his own father had served as a sergeant in the colonial police force, Mr Shin felt he had little choice but to go -- even though he claimed the revelation was as new to him as it was to everyone else. (Kate McGeown, "Raking over S Korea's colonial past")

The fact that Shin Ki-nam had to resign shows how punishment for the sins of Korean fathers are visited upon their sons . . . even for the father's 'sin' of having been a mere sergeant in the police force under Japanese rule.

Our new friend Mr. Won Joon Choe -- who has commented recently on the Korean language as well as upon the ideas of Leo Strauss -- contributed an article, "South Korea's retrograde politics," to Asia Times around the same time (September 4, 2004) as the BBC article, and he commented upon President Roh's 'truth commission' investigation into Korea's colonial suffering as well as the impeachment proceedings launched against Roh that same year:

[M]any Western observers have misinterpreted the meaning of these events. Lacking a firm grasp of the historical and cultural context within which these events transpired -- and sometimes even ignorant of the basic facts about these events -- Western observers have crowed that the impeachment and its aftermath signal the ascension of the rule of law in South Korea and exulted that the proposed truth commission heralds a new era of openness.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The two events taken together, viewed in their proper context, teach a sobering lesson about the difficulties inherent in establishing a genuine liberal democracy atop an authoritarian and communal political culture, a lesson that those intoxicated with "regime change" elsewhere should heed. (Won Joon Choe, "South Korea's retrograde politics")

Mr. Choe reveals that what is really going on is more of less what went on in Korea during the late Chosun Dynasty:

Politics in Korea's last monarchy, the Chosun dynasty (1392-1910), was a vicious "winner-take-all" affair. The losers faced confiscation of their property, exile, and often execution. In a Confucian culture that elevated the rule of men over the rule of law, everything was permissible for those in power. Further, the sins of the fathers were not only visited on the children but on the grandchildren as well, as three generations of family members were enslaved or exterminated. Unfortunately, in spite of the glib rhetoric about South Korea's "vibrant democracy" in the Western media, South Korean politics today resemble the politics of the Chosun dynasty. (Won Joon Choe, "South Korea's retrograde politics")

I'll leave to readers the enjoyment of perusing the article themselves, which is very informative on Korean politics -- with its rule "by" law rather than rule "of" law -- and which is just as relevant now, five years later, but I will quote Mr. Choe's interesting conclusion, which offers a broader application than merely a perspective on Korea:

The persistence of the past and the absence of a genuine liberal political culture in South Korea are deeply troubling. South Korea has a robust economy with a large, well-educated middle class. Its popular culture is inundated with Americana. And if liberalization in such a country is only skin-deep, then one must ask: What hope is there for nations such as Iraq? (Won Joon Choe, "South Korea's retrograde politics")

Indeed. Well, we will certainly see about Iraq, whose tribal, ethnic, and religious divisions make Korean politics look like child's play. Moreover, Mr. Choe's remarks should help put to rest the suspicion in America that Leo Strauss was the intellectual godfather of Neoconservatism's drive to promote democracy everywhere, even at the price of American military intervention, for the 'Straussian' Mr. Choe appears to be profoundly skeptical of such efforts.

But judge for yourselves: read Mr. Choe's article.