Ex-South Korea leader Roh dead, aide says suicide
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea's former President Roh Moo-hyun died while hiking in the mountains near his home early on Saturday and a top aide said he appeared to have jumped to his death.
The suggestion of suicide comes as Roh, whose five-year term ended in early 2008, had in recent weeks become embroiled in a widening corruption scandal in which his wife had also been implicated.
"Former President Roh left his house at 5:45 a.m. and while hiking on the Ponghwa Mountain, appears to have jumped off a rock at around 6:40 a.m.," Moon Jae-in, who was Roh's presidential chief of staff, said in a nationally televised statement.
He also said that Roh had left a will for his family.
"This is a truly unbelievable, lamentable and deeply sad event," President Lee Myung-bak, Roh's successor, said in a statement released by the presidential Blue House.
An official with the Busan University Hospital, in the country's southern port city near Roh's home, told a televised news conference that the ex-leader had died from massive head injuries. The former president was taken to the hospital there.
Yonhap news agency quoted police as saying the 62-year-old ex-leader had fallen to his death from a rock just 200 meters from his home while accompanied by a bodyguard.
The hospital official said Roh had been taken to a local hospital before the university hospital in Busan, where he arrived with no vital signs and was pronounced dead at around 8.30 a.m. (7:30 p.m. EDT).
A South Gyeongsang police officer said police were investigating the circumstances surrounding Roh's death.
Roh, a former lawyer who was the unexpected winner of the 2002 presidential election, continued many of the policies of his liberal predecessor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung, including those aimed at trying to win over a hostile North Korea with unconditional aid.
But by the time he left office, he and many of his policies had become deeply unpopular. He was succeeded by the conservative former businessman Lee, who promised to overturn many of the programs of previous left-leaning governments, including ending a free flow of aid to prickly North Korea.
Even the one legacy Roh was admired for, of at least running a clean government, became badly tarnished when he was called in by prosecutors late last month to answer questions over his involvement in a corruption scandal.
The scandal centered around a leading businessman who had confessed to handing out bribes to a wide range of officials and politicians.
Roh complained that a massive media presence following the corruption allegations had turned him into a virtual prisoner inside his home in the town of his birthplace.
Extracts of his will were read out by KBS television.
One part, in an apparent reference to the huge pressure he had come under in recent weeks, said:
"It's hard. I've given other people a hard time. I can't even read books. Don't blame me. Life and death are one. Cremate me."
Roh had admitted that his wife had taken money from a wealthy local businessman while he was in office, and had publicly apologized. But he said he had not been aware at the time she had taken the money.
Local media said his wife was due to be called in again for questioning over the affair.
(Additional reporting by Kim Jung-hyun; Writing by Jonathan Thatcher; Editing by Paul Tait)
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