|
May 30, 2009
South Koreans Mourn a Former President and Rebuke the Current One
By CHOE SANG-HUN
SEOUL, South Korea — Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans turned out Friday to bid a somber farewell to former President Roh Moo-hyun as anger against the current president, Lee Myung-bak, whom many blame for Mr. Roh’s suicide, continued to grow.
“Goodbye, President!” people shouted as Mr. Roh’s hearse moved slowly along the main boulevard in central
Some also yelled slogans against Mr. Lee, and yellow leaflets carried by many mourners read, “Lee Myung-bak, apologize!”
The crowd in
Despite South Koreans’ mourning, North Korea test-fired a short-range missile on Friday, at least its sixth this week, said an official at the South Korean Defense Ministry who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the delicacy of the issue. The launching followed days of aggressive moves by the North that began with a nuclear test on Monday that has drawn international condemnation.
Mr. Roh, 62, jumped off a cliff last Saturday as prosecutors were aggressively pursuing allegations of corruption against him and his family. His death set off a weeklong period of grief and mourning unrivaled in recent South Korean history.
Emotions continued to run high on Friday. After Mr. Roh’s remains left the city center for cremation south of
But thousands of people tried to march to Mr. Lee’s office behind a mock hearse. When the police built a barricade, the marchers occupied a boulevard in downtown
Over the past year, Mr. Lee, a conservative, has upended many of the policies of Mr. Roh, a liberal who had focused on developing ties with
Mr. Roh’s troubles started soon after he left office in February 2008, when prosecutors began to raise allegations against him and his family. He had long insisted that his government was different. In a country where all the recent presidents were touched by scandal, he said, his government was clean.
Those proclamations appeared to add to the deep disappointment expressed by many South Koreans when Mr. Roh admitted that his family had taken money from a businessman during his term of office, although he said he did not know about the payments until after his presidency ended.
But when he killed himself, a kind of national forgiveness took hold, a sentiment that has begun to evolve into outrage against the Lee government. It has been accused of hounding Mr. Roh’s family with what critics call a politically motivated corruption investigation.
The government did not publicly respond to the charge and helped organize a large state funeral for Mr. Roh, awarding him posthumously the highest government medal for his service.
But the criticisms of Mr. Lee’s government continued at the funeral on Friday, at an ancient palace in
The reversal of fortunes for Mr. Roh, in death, echoed his ability during his lifetime to overcome great political odds.
He won his 2002 election with a razor-thin margin. He then became the first South Korean president to be impeached after he was charged with a minor violation of election rules, but he survived and finished his term.
In the corruption case, the quick shift of emotions — from disappointment to forgiveness — appears to be rooted, in part, in the notion that Mr. Roh had been treated unfairly, and for some had even become a political martyr.
Many South Koreans now argue that the $6 million taken by Mr. Roh’s family from a little-known businessman and family friend paled in comparison to the payments made in previous corruption scandals that exposed extensive ties between the country’s leaders and the heads of its powerful conglomerates, or chaebol.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, the military strongmen who ruled
Roh Moo-hyun’s two immediate predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam, also saw their reputations tainted in their last months in office when their sons were convicted of bribery and widely accused of influence peddling. But prosecutors never summoned the two former presidents.
And although numerous tycoons have been convicted of embezzling or squandering tens of millions of dollars of company money on bribes, few have spent much time in jail.
“My thought when I first heard about the scandal was that the amount involved, $6 million, was small for a presidential scandal in our country and did not come from a chaebol,” said Park Su-na, 30, an office worker in Seoul, referring to the conglomerates. “If President Roh got the money from a chaebol, prosecutors would not have harassed him as much as they did, because they always go soft on the chaebol under the pretext that punishing them too harshly would damage the economy.”
|
첫댓글 Angry crowds day a politically motivated inquiry hounde a man to death
지금 한국은 노무현대통령 서거에 대해서 애도의 물결이 엄청나네요.. 이명박은 민주주의를 무시한채 독재정치로 인해 국민들이 원성을 쌓고있구요 북한문제로도 어지럽구요...