About Roh

The big news out of South Korea this weekend has been the suicide of the preceding Korean President, Roh Moo-Hyun - something that many Koreans found very shocking.

Roh was currently being investigated on corruption charges, that he took bribes while he was in office. In my Freespeaking class, we spend about half the class-time speaking about current-events, and four weeks ago, the subject of these corruption-charges came up. I found out that he was someone who was particularly-popular with youth voters, who had deeply dissapointed most of those followers.

One of my students had said that she had become very disillusioned about politics, because of this scandal.

Sadly, there have been a handful of celebrity-suicides as of late, this of course being the most high-profile. It compounds to a problem that seems to become more and more apparent, these days, in Korea.

I had an interesting front-row seat to seeing the reaction of the general public. I was on my way to Busan, waiting at Seoul's Central train station (i'll recap my trip in a day or two), when the news broke. Many crowds of people formed in front of numerous available televisions, with the reactions ranging from indifference for some, and looks of complete shock and grief for others.

In Busan, we came upon several groups of people who were mourning their loss in public, setting up shrines with President Roh's picture. In some, people lined up one-by-one in order to drop a white-rose by the portrait, and pay a final deep-bow to the former leader.

It was a saddening thing to watch.

Even though the scandal that drove him to suicide made him unpopular, it seems that many people ultimately still loved and respected him. To me, he seemed like a very charismatic man, one who may have just commited a mistake.

May he rest in peace.