[KS] Roh Moo-hyun, RIP

[Afostercarter at aol.com]

Dear friends and colleagues,
 
A busy couple of days in the news for Korea, none  good.
Trust Kim Jong-il to upstage poor Roh Moo-hyun.
 
The Guardian asked me to memorialize Roh.
I wrote against the clock, but tried to weigh my  words.
In his death as in life, I found heart and head in  conflict.
 
Though the Grauniad's edit wasn't bad as edits go
_http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/roh-moo-hyun-obituary_ 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/roh-moo-hyun-obituary) 
I append the full version (too long) as I wrote  it,
which has the balance I intended - for better or  worse.
 
Best wishes
Aidan
 
 
Aidan  Foster-Carter 
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology  & Modern Korea, Leeds 
University  
Flat 1, 40  Magdalen Road, Exeter, EX2 4TE, UK 
T: (+44, no  0)    07970 741307  (mobile);   01392 257753   (home) 
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On May 31 my fiancée Kate is running a marathon  for Camfed, which supports 
education for girls in Africa. Please sponsor this  good cause: 
_http://www.justgiving.com/katehext1_ (http://www.justgiving.com/katehext1)   
_____________________ 
Obituary commissioned by  The Guardian. Completed 24 May 2009.  Edited 
version published on  
25 May 2009 at   
_http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/roh-moo-hyun-obituary_ 
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/24/roh-moo-hyun-obituary)    
Roh  Moo-hyun 
Combative South Korean  president who challenged the old elite 
Aidan  Foster-Carter 
Roh Moo-hyun, who ended his life  on Saturday aged 62, was a South Korean 
president who broke the mould – though  in the end the mould broke him. Born 
in poverty, his tenure in the Blue House  (2003-08) antagonized the Seoul 
elite and Washington while disappointing his  fans. Dismay grew as a 
corruption scandal enveloped him, finally driving him to  jump from a clifftop near 
his home early in the morning after leaving a suicide  note on his computer.  
Roh never lost his roots in Korea’s rural  southeast. The youngest child of 
a poor farmer, his nickname was ‘stone bean’:  small but tough. His 
first-grade teacher said he had many talents – above all in presenting his 
opinions. Unable to afford  college, he worked on building sites while studying at 
night for South Korea's  formidable bar examination. Passing this in 1975 – 
a remarkable feat for a  non-graduate – he was briefly a judge before 
practising as a lawyer. In  1971 he had married his childhood sweetheart Kwon 
Yang-sook, from the same area  and background; her father was once jailed as 
pro-communist. They have a son and  a daughter. 
At first more upwardly mobile than  political – with a comfortable tax 
practice, he joined the local yacht club – in  1980 Roh defended students 
tortured on trumped-up charges by Seoul’s then  military dictators. By his own 
account, the sight of torn-out toenails  radicalized him. Now specializing in 
human rights cases, he was briefly jailed  in 1987: the year democracy was 
restored. Elected to the national assembly for  the port city of Pusan, he 
gained national fame for sharply grilling generals  and tycoons, in sessions 
broadcast live on television. Such irreverence struck a  fresh note in a 
country still in fear of the military and in awe of  elites. 
A spell in the wilderness  followed. When his mentor Kim Young-sam allied 
with generals to win the  presidency in 1993, a disgusted Roh threw in his 
lot with YS’s rival, the  long-time dissident Kim Dae-jung. Regional 
antagonism between the southeast and  DJ’s southwest made the latter a losing ticket 
in Pusan, but Roh doggedly ran  and lost three times. His down to earth 
image as a principled if quixotic loser  inspired his supporters to form Nosamo 
(We Love Roh), South Korea’s first ever  political fan club, which blossomed 
as the Internet  grew. 
Kim Dae-jung won the presidency in  1997, and Roh served briefly as 
fisheries minister. Yet he was still a political  outsider when the ruling party 
decided to choose its next candidate – South  Korean presidents serve a single 
five-year term – via the country’s first ever  primaries. To elite 
consternation, a bandwagon began to roll, delivering Roh the  nomination. Insiders 
tried to deselect him; at one point he trailed third in the  polls. But on 
the day in December 2002 he narrowly defeated a stiff conservative  former 
judge. Koreans wanted a change.  
In office Roh proved divisive. The  establishment hated him, and he them. 
Shunning and at one point suing the  conservative print dailies, Roh favoured 
left-leaning online news sites like  Ohmynews. He promoted the radical 386 
generation: in their 30s, at college in  the 1980s and born in the 1960s. 
Populist and anti-American, the 386ers sounded  a new assertive note. Roh 
himself, who unusually had never visited the US before  (though he wrote a book 
about Abraham Lincoln), riposted by saying he did not  see why he should go 
just to kowtow. 
But the left were soon  disappointed. Roh sent troops to Iraq, and in 2007 
signed a free trade accord  (still unratified) with the US, in the teeth of 
fierce street protests: a Korean  speciality. If Iraq was a sop to Bush so 
that Roh could continue a ‘sunshine’  policy of engaging North Korea, the 
FTA seemed a real change of heart, rejecting  the old ‘fortress Korea’ 
mentality. 
Policies apart, Roh’s style  grated. His mouth tended to run away with him. 
This spontaneity, refreshing at  first, was often combative, could be crude 
and lacked gravitas. He admitted that  on official trips – including the 
first ever Korean state visit to the UK, in  2004 – he packed ramyon (instant 
noodles); all that foreign nosh was  uncongenial. Having no English 
small-talk was a problem too: by the time you  beckoned the interpreter, the moment 
had passed. 
At home Roh was forever upsetting  applecarts, not least his own. Within 
weeks of becoming president, he wondered  aloud if he was up to the job and 
suggested a referendum on his rule. In March  2004 he got one – as the first 
South Korean president ever to be impeached,  which a simple apology could 
have prevented. A popular backlash in his favour  then gave his party a 
majority in elections in April. In May the Constitutional  Court threw out his 
impeachment. Roh, and Korea, bounced back from an unnerving  roller-coaster 
largely of his own making. 
Thus it continued. In 2007 as his  term drew to a close, after years of 
antagonizing the Right on issues ranging  from collaboration with past 
dictatorships to restricting elite schools, Roh  startled friend and foe alike by 
proposing an alliance with the conservative  opposition. The latter rejected 
this. Their candidate Lee Myung-bak, a formaer  Hyundai CEO and mayor of 
Seoul, won a landslide in December 2007’s presidential  election – over a 
centre-left which by then was desperate to distance itself  from Roh, seen as a 
bungling, mercurial liability. 
Still, at least he was clean.  Scorning Seoul, Roh retired to a new house 
in his native village, where he grew  organic rice, drank with the locals and 
blogged. In recent months this idyll  darkened. A bribery scandal involving 
a Pusan shoemaker (a local supplier to  Nike), Park Yeon-cha, was said to 
implicate Roh’s family. On April 7 Roh  admitted his wife took money from 
Park to settle a debt. On April 30 he was  driven to Seoul for a grilling that 
lasted till the small hours. Amid rumours  from a suspiciously leaky 
prosecutor’s office – political bias is alleged – that  Roh solicited $6 million 
from Park, he feared indictment, humiliation and jail.  His death has halted 
this, sparing his family; but the full truth may now never  be known. 
“Discard me”, Roh wrote in his  blog. For all his flaws, future history 
will judge him less harshly than that.  His very weakness helped democracy. No 
emperor, he delegated and did not abuse  power markedly. The economy grew 
at a fair clip, even if he had no clear vision  for it – except a failed bid 
to move the capital from Seoul so as to promote  regional equality. 
His finest hour came in October  2007. Solemnly walking across the 
Demilitarized Zone, he drove on Pyongyang for  a summit with Kim Jong-il whose 
results belied low expectations, launching  wide-ranging business deals with the 
North. For a few months the two Koreas met  daily and cooperated concretely. 
Roh’s successor Lee junked all this, just as in  2003 George W Bush 
brusquely ditched Bill Clinton’s outreach to North Korea.  Si monumentum requiris, 
circumspice. Perhaps sunshine was appeasement,  but does anyone have a 
better idea?  
An odd mix of Candide-like  innocence and often misplaced guile, Roh 
Moo-hyun could be a fool – and a  hypocrite if he was not after all squeaky-clean. 
Yet he was a breath of fresh  air, and his street-smart instincts did not 
lack vision. His end is a tragedy,  for him and for Korea. 
Roh  Moo-hyun, politician; born August 6 1946, died May 23 2009.   

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