South Korea plans public funeral for ex-leader Roh

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-24 15:36

SEOUL - Government of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the family of former President Roh Moo-hyun agreed on Sunday to hold a public funeral for the leader who reportedly jumped to his death after being hounded for weeks in a widening corruption scandal.

Roh, 62, whose single five-year term as president ended about 15 months ago, appears to have leapt from a cliff behind his rural home on Saturday morning.

He wrote in a note before his death: "Don't blame anybody. Please cremate me. And please leave a small tombstone near home." Local police said the results of a provisional investigation indicate the death was suicide.

"It is more desirable to send the former president off in an honourable and courteous way befitting a former president and to allow as many people as possible to pay reverence and praise him," Cheon Ho-seon, a spokesman for Roh when he was president, said in a statement.

Local media said the government and family were looking to hold the funeral on Friday for Roh, a self-taught lawyer who rose from rural poverty and won the presidency backed by a generation of students who hit the streets to fight for democracy in the 1980s.

Perhaps Roh's most celebrated moment came when he went to Pyongyang in 2007 for a summit with Kim Jong-il in what was only the second meeting of leaders of the Korean peninsula.

Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) reported on Roh's death on Sunday, saying in a two-sentence dispatch: "Media at home and abroad are linking the motive of his death with the mental burden caused by the intensive investigation of the prosecution."

Roh was questioned last month by prosecutors on suspicion that his family took about $6 million in bribes from a shoe company CEO, which tarnished the reputation he tried to nurture of being a reformer who wanted to clean up government.

South Korea plans public funeral for ex-leader Roh

Supporters of deceased former ROK President Roh Moo-hyun leave after they mourn at Roh's funeral service at Roh's hometown Bonghwa village in Gimhae, about 450 km southeast of Seoul, May 24, 2009. [Agencies]

The ROK public largely saw Roh as an ineffective leader whose government was marred by numerous missteps and overwhelmingly voted to replace him with a conservative businessman who pledged to undo Roh's economic policies.

The likelihood of suicide could boost sympathy for opponents of his successor President Lee Myung-bak, whose hardline policies have largely overturned the more accommodating approach of Roh in dealings with DPRK and strike-prone labour unions.

Mourners in Seoul paid respects to Roh at the weekend while tearful residents of his southeast Bongha Village hometown lined the streets when a coffin carrying Roh's body arrived back from hospital on Saturday.