HONOLULU — The death of Roh Moo Hyun, the 16th president of the Republic of Korea (2003-2008), is a huge shock to South Korea's political world. A human rights lawyer with no college degree, Roh campaigned to revolutionize Korean politics and society by promoting clean politics, fighting corruption and challenging personal and elite ties as the basis for advancement in Korean society.
His political idealism was both profoundly attractive and disappointing to the South Korean public since he ultimately became a victim of the flaws in the Korean system he had set out to overcome. His apparent suicide following revelations of personal corruption is a stunning political and personal tragedy, with mixed reverberations for Korean politics.
Roh's appeal and the seeds of his personal and political demise lay in his impossible idealism. The overwhelming success of his populist, underdog 2002 presidential campaign — driven primarily by an anticorruption agenda although it was often characterized as anti-American — was electrifying and surprising to no one more than Roh himself. He and his supporters were true believers in the need for reform of South Korean politics and society, but they ultimately could not separate themselves from the human failings of a society of which they were a part.