[Editorial] Protecting Roh's dream

Posted on : 2009-05-30 11:56 KST Modified on : 2009-05-30 11:56 KST

Now he is gone. Just as he wrote that life and death are both a part of nature, he has turned into ashes and scattered. His voice, sometimes a whisper, sometimes a roar, is now silent, and his innocent smile and vivid tears are no longer to be seen. For the citizens who beat their breasts and blame themselves for being unable to protect him, there is now nothing more than memories and mourning amid deep wounds.

However, even if he has left us in body, his dreams have not disappeared. The body may be bound to scatter away in fire, water, earth and wind, but the dreams he inscribed in our souls can neither be disappeared nor be erased. His ardent hope to realize a world where people can truly live has now created a remarkable wave of self-reflection and candles burning in the plaza. They are burning with flames that say, "We have sent you away in body, but we refuse to let go of your dream."

Dreams always appear impossible, and we call things dreams because they appear impossible. This man always dreamed impossible dreams, and he launched his entire being into turning them into reality. Even with absolute power, absolute brutality and absolute hatred standing in his way, he did not back down. Even as he was bruised and battered, he did not give up. He stayed beautiful and pure up until the very last precisely because he never let go of the dream he came to have as a youth, pursuing it until the day he died.

The dream itself was nothing special. It was simply a world in which everyone has rights, just as it says in the Constitution. It is not something one should be dreaming about, as it is a natural state of affairs in a democratic republic where all power is said to come from the people. However, in the world we lived in, even this is something to still be hoped for in dreams. The Constitution has been torn apart by privatized power as often as not. It is because of this that he dreamed of the kind of world where the authorities are wholly in service to the people. However, this dream did not come into being merely through this. Since Roh’s departure from office, power has become privatized and a club used by a small authoritarian group to oppress the people. As it happens, it is precisely this privatized power that drove him to his death.

He also dreamed a world where all people can live like human beings, and where the socially disadvantaged, laborers, peasants, and the working class, can stand tall. A world where migrant laborers and other minorities have their human rights and right to live respected. The kind of world where people are not shunned excluded and discriminated against because they are powerless, lack possessions or are uneducated. There was a controversy where he was suspected of having sold out due to the appearance of bending to the market, but that was only a question of means. It did not mean that he had abandoned his affection and dreams for the socially disadvantaged and members of minorities.

As such, he always emphasized a warm sense of community, brotherly love and solidarity. He proposed letting go of the law of the jungle, where only the fittest survive and the winner takes all. He proposed to build in its place a law of coexistence and mutual benefit. He dreamed of bringing into reality the justice of sharing food and sharing opportunities. Indeed, the battle against regionalism that he pursued at the risk of his political career was not unrelated to this. Regional emotions are at the root of the conflicts and fragmentation of our society. It was also for this reason that he put forth a number of controversial ideas, including a grand coalition and a party split. The dream of overcoming regionalism was an ongoing goal and project for Roh Moo-hyun the politician. Only by doing so, he believed, could a world come into being where principles prevail over connections and relations, where one is judged by legitimate efforts and a proper vision.

The reason citizens beat their breasts during the funeral had something to do with their sense of perhaps being complicit in the abandonment and exclusion of this dream of Roh’s. People following along the same path dwelled on tiny differences and became hostile and critical, conflicted and fragmented. Roh was forced to live his life always ready to take a beating from both the left and the right. Perhaps one of the fatal outcomes of this is that power was subsequently seized by forces who serve money over people, and by groups valuing competition and exclusion over mutual benefit and coexistence. Peace and solidarity have turned into conflict and fragmentation, and the poor have grown poorer. People who do the right thing have been persecuted and sacrificed one after another.

What has rescued us from illusion is, paradoxically enough, his death. His death announced not an end, but a new beginning. With it, the dream has come alive once again, and that dream has become our dream. Now it has become a flame lighting up the advancing darkness, blazing high in the plazas, in the hearts of the impoverished and in the hands of the righteous.

Now he has returned to the place where he was born and raised, this time in ashes. Around this time, the white flowers of the wild rose will have blossomed in the foothills of Bonghwasan that greet him. The wild rose, the flower of the poor, the flower that blooms in the hearts of those who live with wounds, a flower like a tender sister and a warm mother, a flower that blooms in low and shaded places with the faint scent of the first promise yet never breaks, a flower that resembles him. It blooms and will bloom again, and so our May will never be lonely.

Nonetheless, no matter how many vows we make, there is nothing to done for the sadness that comes rushing upon us. Why are so many of those we loved leaving us so pointlessly this shining season? Roh Moo-hyun, and the ones he sought to protect... Park Jong-tae, Lee Sang-rim, Yang Hui-seong, Lee Seong-su...

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