hankyoreh

“Many people have suffered because of me. I cannot imagine the suffering they and I will go through in the future, too.”

In these two lines in the suicide note left by the late President Roh Moo-hyun, we can fathom how great the pressure and suffering was that he had to endure since leaving office. The core of this was caused by suspicions of corruption related to Taekwang Industrial Chairman Park Yeon-cha. As a result of this scandal, Roh‘s family members were virtually ruined, and people that had formerly stood by Roh were hurt, also.

It is customary that punishment follows if corruption is discovered, but one cannot erase the impression that in the Park Yeon-cha case, it proceeded in exactly the opposite way. This case unfolded with a set objective to get Roh and various public organs began engaging in crossfire. For many observers, this includes the “strange” behavior of the tax authorities and prosecutors in relation to the Park case that they say resulted in a “political murder.”

The Park case began with an audit of Taekwang Industrial conducted in July of last year. The responsible organ for this audit was the 4th Inspection Bureau of the Seoul Regional Tax Office, which handles real estate speculation and complex matters where various forms of business intersect. Agents boasting the greatest investigative power were unprecedentedly dispatched to the headquarters of medium-sized company of no more than 500 billion Won in sales a year located in Gimhae, Gyeongsangnam-do. Even within the National Tax Service (NTS), there were people claiming that Han Sang-yool, the head of the NTS at the time who was seeking reappointment, was conducting a “political investigation” to curry favor with the Lee Myung-bak administration. It is said Han directly reported details discovered by the 4th Inspection Bureau regarding the money transactions between former President Roh’s side and Park to President Lee.

The Felony Bureau of the Supreme Prosecutor‘s Office launched its investigation of Park late last year, and from March of this year, they had begun a full-scale investigation of Roh, adding eight prosecutors to ten who were already participating in the investigation. Prosecutors had explained they were boosting the number of investigators because they were being used to support the arraignment of other cases, including the fire sale of Korea Exchange Bank (KEB), stock manipulation in the takeover of KEB’s credit card unit, and lobbying charges against Jo Pung-Eon in relation to Daewoo Information Systems who had been found not guilty by lower courts. However, it has been revealed that the number of investigators was increased during the course of the investigation in order to get Roh. Unlike a traditional special investigation, which seeks to precisely and quickly cut out only the infected part, prosecutors rampaged with a “gotcha” investigation that shook the rugs until the dust flew.

In this regard, we can say the case of late President Roh was the most unfortunate in South Korean history, brought about by the Lee Myung-bak administration, which despised the person more than the crime.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]