Hoon Lee [Senior Foreign Attorney, Sigong Law P.C.]: "South Korea is now almost at the end of a 7-day national mourning period for its former (16th) president, Roh Moo Hyun, who had abruptly ended his life by jumping off a cliff near his retirement village of Bong-ha, with a state "people's funeral" set to take place this Friday (May 29th).

People in Korea are obviously overwhelmed by the shock and sadness over his dramatic death, and are also much angered by the way the Supreme Prosecutors' Office had conducted its investigation against Mr. Roh and his family and friends.

For a person who had built his reputation as a "clean" politician and who had tried to break collusive ties between politics and big businesses while in office, it must have been unbearably difficult for Mr. Roh to have been the subject of an intense investigation by the prosecutors for bribery charges involving more than 6 million dollars.

Promptly after the death of Mr. Roh, the prosecutors officially ended the investigation as they no longer have jurisdiction over the case due to the death of the subject of the investigation. With the dropping of the case, however, the prosecutors themselves now have become a target of criticism that Mr. Roh's death was in fact a political murder committed by the prosecutors, with the current Lee Myung-bak administration orchestrating the politically motivated investigation.

The Korean constitutional system is based upon the presidential system, of which a basic principle is the division of power through checks and balances. But, in a modified form, the Korean system concentrates all the authority on the president, which has often resulted in corruption and abuse of power by those close to the president, and the succeeding governments have used the corruption of the predecessor to gain support and justify the power shift.

Another anomaly in Korea is also a justice system with few checks and balances, and that has resulted in the prosecutors becoming the most omnipotent force in Korea. And a powerful president who could control the prosecutors through power to make appointments (for prosecutor positions) is able to attack his political opponents through the prosecutors' investigation.

The political habit for presidents in South Korea to try to gain support by punishing former presidents originally started in the early 1990s when the first democratically elected governments punished the military rulers like former president Chun Doo Hwan who was blamed for his actions related to a crackdown on democracy protesters.

Setting aside the question of Mr. Roh's culpability, the charges brought against him were minor compared to other former presidents who had collected massive sums from the nation's top business conglomerates. But Mr. Roh was still not able to avoid the vicious cycle of the presidential investigation and chose to end his tumultuous life rather than having to continue to endure the humiliations of his "clean" image being tarnished.

With his death, however, there is now a serious talk of constitutional revision to curb the president's power. While in office, Mr. Roh tried to make the presidency less imperial and also vowed to curtail the powers of the presidency. If and to the extent that Mr. Roh's death may finally bring about some of the changes needed to break the vicious cycle of the presidential investigation and retribution, Mr. Roh's most important legacy may unwittingly come posthumously."