Living memory of Roh Moo Hyun: Group cohesion,cultural politics,and the process of symbolic interaction

Defiant dreamer who aspired to build a good society

The commemorators of Roh commonly recollect him as a defiant dreamer who refuses to accept discrepancies between normative ideals and the given reality. They convey that he had a lifelong dream of realizing a good society that he called “the world where human beings live” (saramsanŭn sesang). This phrase was the title of the first book he published in 1989 as a neophyte legislator, and it has also been the name of the Internet homepage created in 2008 after he completed his term. The commemorators share the following ideas about the world where human beings live. It is a society where “common sense” (sangsik) and “principles” (wŏnch’ik) work in everyday life, and where people follow rules, and privileges are not accepted. It is also a society with trust that Roh believed was to be the most precious social capital. His common sense was not customary conventions that most people follow habitually or out of necessity but just and rational ideas that ought to be the working principles of a good society. Examples of his common sense cited in the commemorative publications show his rational, progressive, and populist orientation: If people receive education, they should be able to find secure employment. People should be treated fairly and rewarded for their hard work. The haves should share their wealth with the have-nots. Citizens are the master of the president (Chang, 2009: 105–106). His principles are not what we can bend or give up to win, but an essential element of victory; hence, he wrote that the best outcome is victory with principles, and the next is loss with principles, and the worst is loss without principles. He did not consider victory without principles (Oh, 2009: 84). He insisted on principles, no violation of rules, and no privileges because they nurture trust among people whom political opportunism and expediency have destroyed in Korean society (Oh, 2009: 105).

The commemorators cherish Roh for his (foolish) idealism combined with audacious passion to turn normative ideals into common sense. He entered politics with passionate commitment to leaving “a piece of evidence for our children that one can succeed without compromising with injustice” (Yu et al., 2009: 138). He considered politics, which is deeply corrupted and insidious in reality, as a vehicle to reduce the gap between normative ideals and the given reality, and to construct a good society. Foremost, they memorialize him for being a rare leader who gave them hope that they can build a good society.

The commemorators recollect Roh’s pre-presidential life that shows his quality as a dreamer who does not accept a given reality and who follows his ideals. Although he attended a trade high school and found a humble job at a small fishnet manufacturing company after his graduation, he did not settle down with this situation. After quitting this job that did not pay even his meager rent, he aspired to take the bar examination despite his lack of a college education, a requirement for the examination at that time. Through self-education, he finally passed the bar examination and became a judge in a local court. Again he did not settle for this prestigious job and became a tax lawyer. Although he could lead a comfortable life as a well-paid lawyer at last, after experiencing grueling poverty for so long, he again refused to settle for this reality and became a human rights lawyer and political activist when he was 35 years old, already a married man with two children and a wife to support. In December 1988, when “the Fifth Republic hearings” were held at the National Assembly to investigate the brutal injustice committed by Chun Doo Whan’s military regime (1980–1987), Roh distinguished himself from other lawmakers by interrogating powerful military and economic elites with straightforward questions and articulating impassioned arguments. This exceptional performance made him a rising star overnight in the eyes of the public who had never seen a politician like him before. Yet, instead of utilizing this political capital to advance his own political career, he ran for National Assembly elections and a mayoral election in districts where he was likely to lose because of regionalism in Korean politics. By losing, he wanted to prove that politics was not simply about winning an election by dividing people up with regional enmity but about bringing people together to construct a better society. The commemorators admire him for his integrity and “foolish” pursuit of ideals during his life.

Why do the commemorators find Roh’s quality as a defiant dreamer so memorable? There is certainly a universal appeal of a political leader who combines idealism with passion for turning ideals into a reality. At the same time, there is a specific sociopolitical context in contemporary Korea that amplifies such an appeal. There is an intensity of collective longing for a good society different than the given reality among the commemorators who produced the redemptive narrative about Roh after his suicide. This intense longing stems from a gap between the reality the commemorators face and their expectation for improvement based on the rapid economic development and tumultuous democratization that Korean society had been undergoing. Although South Korea is industrialized (and postindustrial) and (procedurally) democratized, a majority of Koreans find qualities of their lives rather unsatisfactory or even deplorable. ⁸ Especially in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis (1997–1998), secure full-time employment has been severely undermined even for college-educated men, and the disparity between the wealthy and the rest has rapidly widened. Competition for decent jobs has become very fierce in this densely populated society. More importantly, such competition dictates that most people violate the formal rules or normative ideals they learn in school because society has a deeply ingrained legacy of authoritarian regimes that disregard rules and principles as mere trappings of modern statehood. In particular, the developmental state under military leaders pursued swift economic growth at all cost and validated a predatory attitude that winning is everything and only the stupid follow rules. Roh himself best captured this pervasive problem when he delivered in December 2001 his formal speech about his decision to run for the 2002 presidential election. He comments with a sense of historical urgency:

For 600 years, those who wanted to live with wealth and prestige in Korea had to be sycophantic toward the powerful. If we wanted to secure our meals, we had to pretend that we did not see it even when injustice was committed in front of our eyes and the powerful crushed the weak. Our 600-year history forced us to live subservient lives with our eyes and ears closed to secure our meals and maintain our lives. My mother left me our family precepts: “son, a pointed stone gets a hit with a graver, no use to hit a rock with eggs, and live tactfully as wind blows and waves move.” For righteous and vigorous young sons who went to a prison in the 1980s because of their dissident protests, their mothers gave them the same advices. Our history forced us to teach this cowardly precepts. We need to clean up this history. We need to make once a history of facing the powerful and obtaining power fairly from them. Only then can our young people talk about justice with confidence and make a new history of confronting injustice. (Oh, 2009: 107, 109; author’s translation)

Roh’s “foolish” insistence on principled behavior and making normative ideals common sense in practice lasted throughout his political career for two decades. This deeply moved many Koreans, especially powerless common people and a younger generation with better education and higher expectations for their own society. He became a compelling politician to these Koreans by articulating a universal human problem in the language that Koreans can relate to. At a philosophical level, Roh faced his urge to grapple with an existential problem of human life that theodicy has dealt with in religion: why do good people suffer in this world? To use his own words, “Why are those worthy of our respect in our modern and contemporary history nothing but losers?” and “Why are those who pursued just ideas defeated in history?” He could not possibly accept this “paradoxical imperative” (Roh, 2001: 5–6). Instead of finding a divine or other-worldly explanation for this existential puzzle, Roh aspired to face this question with a counter example of good people who became successful by pursuing justice and following common sense. As a politician, he intended to be one such example to give ordinary people hope. Precisely because of his headstrong courage not to accept the given reality deplorable to a majority of powerless Koreans, he became a symbol of hope among the powerless majority and the educated people with progressive sensibilities.

In light of memory studies from sociological perspectives, the specific commemorative theme that recast Roh as a defiant dreamer serves to define his supporters figuratively as a progressive tribe that comes together under him as their totemic leader. It reveals how the production and circulation of collective memory promotes group cohesion among his supporters. Such cohesion becomes quite urgent among his commemorators because his supporters lost the 2008 presidential election, and they drifted apart in its aftermath. Roh’s suicide during the escalating investigation of his family, his former staff, and his supporters, by Lee Myung-bak’s government, was an additional blow to his supporters. At the same time, this event offered a crucial chance for the commemorators to reassert his vision of a good society and its relevance for Korean society, and thereby promote group solidarity for his supporters. As discussed below, his commemorators redeem his negative reputation generated by his opponents, by recasting him as a symbol of a threat to the status quo.

A nonmainstream (pijuryu) politician who challenged mainstream elites and therefore was destroyed

The commemorators of Roh remember him as the object of abomination among conservative mainstream elites because of his humble, nonmainstream background as well as his “progressive” orientation. In this way of remembering, his commemorators are implicitly engaged in a battle against his opponents whose own voices are obscured in the commemorative publications. As a commemorator expresses, “He was a non-mainstream guy who refused to follow the navigator devised by the mainstream” and pursued his own way (Yu et al., 2009: 159). His vision of a good society, based on just and rational common sense and fair principles, challenged privileges that the elites had become very accustomed to. His view of politics as a vehicle to build a good society unsettled their frequent use of politics as a tool to advance their own private or group interests. Furthermore, actually being elected to presidency without money and powerful social ties from college and hometown affiliations—which the elites have relied on for so long—he posed a real threat to the mainstream order of things. The commemorators note, however, that the mainstream abomination of Roh is often visceral, rather than rational. During his presidency, Roh rarely implemented antibusiness policy and did not particularly promote workers interests (as indicated in the signing of the FTA), which alienated many of his supporters. Rather, he released those big corporations from the burden of contributing political funds during elections. The national economy was doing reasonably well (Yu et al., 2009: 59). The commemorators note that the elites’ visceral abhorrence of Roh exudes a sense of a master’s superiority toward his low-born servant, which echoes back from hereditary status hierarchy in traditional Korea. A commemorator captures with sarcasm the almost instinctive rejection of Roh, which was pervasive among the elites:

The group with vested interests in Korea did not recognize Roh Moo Hyun as president … They could not bear him. He did not follow a dominant party clique that has been central to the established political order and behaved “rudely” like an itinerant market peddler toward Chun Doo Hwan and Chung Joo Young when he was questioning them in hearings [held in 1988] as a fledgling National Assembly member. Posing as a human rights lawyer, he was hanging out with workers. College? He finished a vocational high school. Hometown? He was of course not from Taegu, Kyŏngsang Province [where a majority of political leaders in Korea came from] and not even from Pusan, Kyŏngsang Province; he came from boondocks called Pongha Village near a place called Kimhae. To their eyes, he should have been their “farmhand” (mŏsŭm). (Chung Hui-jun, professor at Dong-a University in Yu et al., 2009: 58, the author’s translation)

The commemorators recollect that Roh’s nonmainstream values and behavior invited equally visceral wrath from three powerful conservative newspapers. Unlike other political leaders before him, Roh did not pay tribute to these powerful media and instead tried to eliminate unfair privileges that the elite media had become so accustomed to. He conducted his first media interview with the only 2-year-old Oh My News and commented that this was suitable for him, a person who was elected through an Internet-based grassroots movement. He also opened the press rooms of the Blue House and other government buildings—which were reserved for the powerful big media—to small- and medium-sized media and Internet media. Hence, throughout his presidency, these conservative newspapers persistently attacked him with criticism, distorted reporting of his policies, and ridiculed him for his unpolished speech, manners, and behavior.

The commemorators remember Roh as a symbol of popular democracy destroyed by the mainstream elites who feared that his precedent would encourage other nonmainstream candidates to challenge the status quo in the future, possibly every 5 years at the time of presidential election. The elites had to prove to the public that a nonmainstream person like him was not really material for president because he did not have the superior education, family background, and resources that they had. They also had to show to the public that what would happen to someone humble and nonmainstream like him if he dared to challenge them. The commemorators note that as soon as Roh completed his term and returned to his hometown to lead a life of an ordinary citizen and farmer, the mainstream government—restored by the election of Lee Myung-bak (February 2008–February 2013)—launched the investigation of him and his family for wrongdoings. ⁹ The prosecution had been diligently leaking tentative findings and guesswork about these cases to the conservative media, which had been extremely hostile toward Roh. The commemorators are deeply suspicious of the prosecution because it had previously failed to press charges against former presidents and their families who committed far graver crimes, including the mass killing of citizens in Kwangju (Yu et al., 2009: 69). The commemorators recollect unbearable surveillance and intrusion that the powerful media committed against Roh during the spring of 2009. Numerous media reporters and cameramen descended to his hometown to broadcast minor details of his behavior minute by minute to attract viewers. These media became so intrusive to his private life that Roh and his family could not open their windows and walk around in the yard. ¹⁰ The commemorators mention that Roh’s house became a prison, and even before he ended his life, his social and personal life already ended by the concerted smear campaign by the prosecution and the mass media (The World Where Humans Live, Roh Moo Hyun Foundation, 2009: 56–59).

The commemorators link the investigation and destructive media publicity to repressive and obstructionist behavior of Lee’s government during Roh’s memorial events that ordinary citizens organized for a week prior to his funeral ceremony on 29 May 2009. By deploying the riot police, the government prevented individual mourners from gathering in the City Hall Plaza to set up a memorial altar. As mourners moved to the Great Han Gate near Tŏk-su Palace to find alternative space, the additional riot police blocked the space. Throughout the first day after Roh’s death, the government deployed over 10,000 riot police in Seoul to monitor the movement of individual mourners and closed major plazas in downtown Seoul where mourners could voluntarily gather (The World Where Humans Live, Roh Moo Hyun Foundation, 2009: 29, 35). As a result, the commemorators recollect, Seoulites set up a shabby “citizens’ memorial altar” in front of the Great Han Gate that they carved out, and they refused to visit the official altars established by the government at the Seoul History Museum and the Seoul Station Plaza. As days went by, the number of makeshift citizens’ memorial altars grew not only across Seoul but also across the entire country. Individual mourners honored their nonofficial and humble altars as places befitting for their nonmainstream president. During the funeral ceremony, which was finally decided to be observed as a national ceremony, the government did not provide necessary assistance despite its agreement to do so, and instead, obstructed the process. To many commemorators’ shock, the government did not even allow Kim Dae Jung, the 15th President who was old and ill, to deliver his memorial speech during Roh’s funeral ceremony. ¹¹

What is the specific sociopolitical context that made Roh’s nonmainstream background, values, and behavior so compelling and therefore memorable? There is certainly a universal appeal of a nonmainstream underdog who challenges the mainstream in any modern society of popular democracy, where people cherish the ideal of open upward mobility through hard work. At the same time, there is the specific Korean context characterized by the restoration of mainstream elites who have defined the governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun as “lost ten years.” As Roh himself perceptively recognized, his election was not so much a result of the solid establishment of popular democracy but more a fluke of exceptional factors, including Roh’s uniqueness as a politician who could overcome regionalism because of his lifelong struggle, and the unprecedented participation of progressive citizens in election campaigns (Oh, 2009: 235–240). Social groups and individuals who embrace popular democracy in conservative Korea remain non-mainstream and tenuous. This is well reflected by the subsequent election of Lee Myung-bak to the presidency after Roh. He is not only a former chief executive officer (CEO) of the Hyundai conglomerate who rose rapidly in the corporate hierarchy under Chung Joo Young’s patronage but also an ardent guardian of the mainstream order of things, including developmentalism and anticommunism. As mentioned above, Chung was the powerful businessman whom Roh interrogated in the Fifth Republic hearings back in 1988. The concerted attack on Roh by Lee’s government, and the conservative media contributing to his death, heightens the vulnerability of Roh’s supporters as a nonmainstream social group. The emerging commemorative narrative about Roh mitigates this vulnerability by strengthening cohesion among his supporters vis-à-vis his opponents.

Like the previous theme, this commemorative theme that recasts Roh as a challenger to the status quo redeems his tarnished reputation by explaining why he was harshly criticized and even ridiculed during his presidency. It reveals the muted voices of his opponents who are currently ruling the society and enables us to see the deeply contested nature of this living memory. As an aspect of living memory, this theme also helps us understand that the commemorative narrative that promotes group cohesion among Roh’s supporters is embedded in the cultural politics of the contentious reputation about him in the larger society. As discussed below, collective memory of Roh as a president of common people shows the use of familiar cultural symbols in constructing the commemorative narrative to redeem his reputation.

“President in my heart”: a democratic president of common people (sŏmin)

The commemorators generally recast Roh as the president of common people because of his own humble background and the friendly and respectful attitude and empathy he exhibited toward ordinary people without power and money. The idea of common people in Korean refers to a broad range of people below the middle strata who are not affluent. ¹² Roh (2001) himself used the phrase “common people’s president” (sŏmin taet’ongnyŏng) in the book, Lincoln that Roh Moo Hyun met, which he published in the process of making his decision to run for the 2002 presidential election. Roh viewed Abraham Lincoln as his role model of a “successful president” and characterized him as the common people’s president. Building on this self-identification, the commemorators connect certain well-known anecdotes in his life to his empathy with common people.

For example, Roh gave up his comfortable life as a tax lawyer and became a human rights lawyer and activist because he could not overlook the shocking violence inflicted on student activists fighting against the military dictatorship, which he accidentally witnessed in the early 1980s. He helped exploited workers and joined their struggle because he could not remain a bystander in the face of their immense suffering. Roh became a politician because he hoped to make a humane society for the underprivileged. After he completed his presidency, as he mentioned earlier, he returned to his hometown in remote Pongha Village because he deeply felt that he was one of those rural villagers. Following his own principle of no special privileges for elites, Roh rode a Korean Train Express (KTX) just like other ordinary passengers to his hometown and began his life as a rural farmer and grandfather. For 15 months prior to his death, he worked in the field wearing a straw hat, and lived like his unassuming neighbors who bought packs of cigarettes at a local store, and enjoyed his leisure time riding a bicycle with his little granddaughter. At the same time, the commemorators note, Roh was dedicated to developing his village and giving hope to other villages. He introduced organic farming for rice production to revive the depressed rural economy in the era of the FTA (which, ironically he signed during his presidency). He persuaded his neighbors, who were reluctant to try something new, to produce organically cultivated rice, which he grew with them. In addition, he set up his own Internet sites (Saramsanŭn sesang and Democracy 2.0) to communicate with his fellow citizens and nurture a grassroots movement to deepen democracy in Korea. After his retirement to his hometown, Roh’s popularity, which plummeted during his presidency, grew, and a growing number of people started to visit his hometown to see the former president who “threw away his authority” and was leading the life of an ordinary citizen (Kim, 2009: 154). ¹³ The commemorators tearfully remember that he greeted those visitors like their uncle or grandfather, and he was so delighted to interact with them. ¹⁴

The commemorators also convey unprecedented love and sorrow with which the grassroots people showered Roh as their president during his impeachment and his funeral. When he was impeached in the spring of 2004 for the first time in Korean political history, ¹⁵ tens of thousands of ordinary citizens gathered at downtown Seoul every night to protest against the decision made by the political elite and to show their torrential support for him. Known as “candle light vigils,” the mass rally continued for days, and over a million people joined these vigils during this period. The commemorators recollect that these protesters showed their additional support for Roh in the 2004 National Assembly election in April, giving a landslide victory to his Wuri Party and made this new party the majority in the National Assembly. This popular support for him also influenced the Constitutional Court ruling (in May 2004) in favor of Roh, and restored his presidential authority. Similarly, in the aftermath of his death, people poured out their grief across the country. During a week prior to his funeral, over a million visitors went to his hometown to pay homage to him. Over half a million people came to his funeral observed in downtown Seoul and joined a street ceremony afterward (An et al., 2009: 169–170; The World Where Humans Live, Roh Moo Hyun Foundation, 2009: 263–264). The widely shared feelings of love and sorrow are well captured by the following excerpt from a poem, “I bury you in my heart”:

For a lifetime you stood with the weak.

You knew about their suffering better than anyone else

but you were never weak.

In a world run by the powerful and the renowned

you jumped down to the rock of distrust that seemed to be unbreakable

like an egg hitting on the rock.

You were broken into hot tears and flowing down.

I believe that those tears will moisten this dry world

and tie our hearts together into one.

I believe that those tears will be powerful arms to destroy invincible walls.

Now I bury you in my heart.

Now you are buried in the hearts of all citizens

You were a genuine fool in this world without fools.

Please sleep in comfort. (Sŏn-t’ae Kim in Chŏng, 2009: 211; author’s translation)

The commemorators connect Roh’s empathy for the common people to his democratic and egalitarian sensibility. Believing that ordinary citizens are the masters of a political leader, he democratized his presidency under the mottos of “humble power” (kyŏmsonhan kwŏllŏk) and “morality of power” (kwŏllŏgŭi todŏksŏng) and tried to eliminate authoritarian conventions deeply ingrained in the workings of the Korean presidency. Even when he was a presidential candidate, the commentators note, he vocally advocated the dissipation of power of the imperial president, and immediately after his election, he announced himself as “people’s president” (Yi, 2009b: 11). Soon after his inauguration, he turned Chŏngnamdae, a presidential villa with an expansive golf resort and a fish farm used by five presidents before him, into a public park. Although his staff opposed to this idea, he proceeded because he believed that such a huge villa was an inordinate privilege that should not have a place in the good society he envisioned (Chang, 2009: 104–105). In addition, the commemorators recollect that following his first National Assembly speech delivered in April 2003, ¹⁶ throughout his presidency, Roh refused to take advantage of the prosecution, the police, the national intelligence agency, and the national tax administration office, which were important government organs commonly used by former presidents to spy on their opponents and secure their own power (Chang, 2009: 114). The commemorators share with a deep sense of guilt that the public, including Roh’s initial supporters, failed to appreciate his principled behavior of following what he believed to be common sense, while they ridiculed it as naiveté unsuitable for the president. One commemorator conveys the pervasive feeling of guilt and thus regret:

He was a fool. This fool made us infinitely shameful. He was the most hopeful person among the failed, the least corrupted among the successful, the least authoritarian among the powerful. I heard someone saying that he would want to born again to be a happy citizen of a country if Roh were born again and became a “fool-president.” I want to join the fool’s march. (An et al., 2009: 150; author’s translation)

What aspect of the specific sociopolitical context made Roh’s empathy for the underprivileged and his democratic sensibility so compelling, and therefore memorable? It is the emergence of social groups who look for an egalitarian leader who can empathize with ordinary people and communicate with them as fellow citizens, rather than a domineering leader. These individuals are products of social change characterized by the expansion of higher education and a rising standard of living in the 1980s and 1990s, and conservative democratization in the 1990s and 2000s. On the one hand, the number of college students multiplied during those decades, and this, in combination with the rising standard of living, led to the emergence of “post-scarcity values” that address qualities of life beyond material abundance. A progressive segment of the educated population began to cherish a democratic leader, but the conservative nature of democratization in Korea has frustrated this expectation. On the other hand, a large number of workers in manufacturing and service industries became aware of their basic rights in the process of the labor organizing that exploded in the late 1980s, and a progressive segment of this working population (both middle class and working class) also began to appreciate a democratic leader. Yet, in the process of conservative democratization, politics has remained an exclusive realm reserved for professional politicians who continued to rely on authoritarian conventions. Most political leaders have remained far from a democratic leader who treats their people equally and respectfully.

For the progressive segments of the Korean population, Roh became an avatar of an egalitarian and avuncular leader. His egalitarian sensibilities make him a leader who is like an accessible friend or a neighbor rather than a commanding general. His words and actions amply testify this. Roh repeatedly mentioned that according to Article One of the Constitution, sovereignty of the Republic of Korea lies in the people and all power stems from them. He aspired to make this formal declaration a lived reality. In his populist view, the people are not passive followers led by a wise or strong leader but active participants in governing; it is not one exceptional and heroic leader but a large number of ordinary people who can discern right values and ideology that can bring about progressive change in society (Chang, 2009: 211). The name of his administration, “participatory government” (ch’amyŏjŏngbu), reflects this emphasis on democratization of power. Hence, Roh intended to establish a rational system of public administration, which does not depend upon an imperial president. He carried out a series of reforms to reduce extensive authority of such a presidency in Korea. He eliminated presidential appointments of high-ranking officers and adopted open competition among applicants. He communicated with people directly via the Internet. His administration made policy reports available in the Blue House homepage for open public access (p. 95). While Roh was aware of popular nostalgia for a “powerful” leader like Park Chung Hee, he believed that Koreans now lived in a different time. Modeling himself after Abraham Lincoln, ¹⁷ he believed that powerful leadership would not be forceful leadership but unifying leadership that would stem from people’s trust and democratic procedure, and it would also be horizontal and open leadership (Roh, 2002: 15).

Like the previous two themes, this commemorative theme shows a specific way in which Roh’s supporters define their group identity under Roh and promote cohesion among themselves against his opponents. Like the previous themes, this theme also reveals how his supporters use familiar anecdotes from his life along with the recognizable symbol of uncle, farmer, and grandfather to recast him as a democratic president of common people.