The 16th president of South Korea ended his own life today in the peaceful mountainside near his retirement home. He took with him the burden of a humiliating prosecution that stamped a man who fought his whole life for democracy and justice with a $6 million dollar corruption scandal. "You should now discard me," he wrote in a 14-line note, his last remaining message to the world. "I no longer stand for the values you pursue."
Former President Roh Moo-hyun, a human rights lawyer who was swept into office in 2002 on the wave of change and hope, was far from a conniving politician. He had a mind of his own, and frequently turned the floors upside down by challenging the traditional hierarchy of Korean politics. His opponents called him ignorant and reckless. His supporters, which continued to dwindle in size after fits of labor unrest, economic downturn and diplomatic friction, called him brave and revolutionary. Ultimately, he was a man with bigger dreams than his politics could handle.
Roh was born in the rural outskirts of Kimhae near Korea's second largest city of Busan a year after Korea was liberated from Japanese colonization. Even before becoming a politician, Roh knew the ins and outs of protesting against authority. In 1960, he led a student protest refusing to write a mandatory essay praising then president Syngman Rhee.
A self-made man who never attended university, Roh passed the bar in 1975 and practiced tax law until he personally saw the bruised and bloody bodies of tortured students. In a move that changed his life, he went from prosecuting tax offenders to defending students and labor activists from torture. In 1987, he participated directly in the pro-democracy movement that transformed the political nature of Korea. His fight against corruption, autocracy, and power was the example of the courage people wanted to see.
After being elected to a few insignificant regional political positions starting in 1988, Roh appeared from the shadows and won the December 2002 presidential elections by a narrow margin of 2%. His support base was a group of internet-savvy young people who called themselves Nosamo, or "Roh lovers group," and were hungry for political change.
As the underdog who knew seemed to know little about the complicated etiquette of politics, Roh came into office with ambitious plans of reforming everything from the tax system to the educational system to the location of the country's capital. As suspected, he pushed the wrong buttons on too many important people.
When change did not come as quickly as expected and the economy slumped from falling investment, Roh’s popularity also took a downward turn. His friendly policies toward North Korea were criticized as submissive appeasement and his decision to send troops to Iraq in contradiction to his distant attitude toward Washington flared up public controversy.
Then in March 2004, the opposition party impeached Roh on charges of unconstitutionally electioneering and governing incompetently. Though the constitutional court overturned the impeachment, Roh could not satisfy either his supporters or his critics with any of his subsequent policies. He ended his administration with several unfinished tasks, including the KORUS FTA and his unsuccessful housing reform plan.
But unlike other former presidents, Roh stayed in the public eye even after leaving office. He maintained a website and his quiet home in Bonghwa Village became a sort of tourist attraction for hundreds of curious bypassers a day. Despite the criticism regarding his policies, there were still many who revered the former president for upholding his values of progressivism, freedom of civil society, and welfare for the poor.
Then, in the midst of his transition to semi-normal life, Roh and his family members were accused of bribery involving $6 million dollars in payments from a businessman. After months of intense interrogation and public derailment, the former twinkle in the ex-president’s eyes turned into bloodshot fatigue.
“I apologize for disappointing the people,” he wrote, before taking his life.
In a society where a politician is expected to take moral responsibility for scandals involved with family members, Roh could not escape the guilt of tarnishing the sacred values he stood for. It did not matter that several other former presidents had also been involved in bribery scandals. He felt, with the most respect for Korean society, that he had not done his job as a civil servant. But his death leaves many with a disheartening question. If not him, who spoke out against corruption and power all his life, then who?
Roh Moo-hyun is survived by his wife, Kwon Yang-sook, his son, Roh Geon-ho, and his daughter, Roh Jeong-yon. May he rest in peace and the values he fought for be taken on by those left behind.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
The Eloquent Sounds of Silence
By Pico Iyer
Time Magazine, originally published in 1993, republished 2001
Every one of us knows the sensation of going up, on retreat, to a high place and feeling ourselves so lifted up that we can hardly imagine the circumstances of our usual lives, or all the things that make us fret. In such a place, in such a state, we start to recite the standard litany: that silence is sunshine, where company is clouds; that silence is rapture, where company is doubt; that silence is golden, where company is brass.
But silence is not so easily won. And before we race off to go prospecting in those hills, we might usefully recall that fool's gold is much more common and that gold has to be panned for, dug out from other substances. "All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence," wrote Herman Melville, one of the loftiest and most eloquent of souls. Working himself up to an ever more thunderous cry of affirmation, he went on, "Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is the only Voice of our God.'' For Melville, though, silence finally meant darkness and hopelessness and self-annihilation. Devastated by the silence that greeted his heartfelt novels, he retired into a public silence from which he did not emerge for more than 30 years. Then, just before his death, he came forth with his final utterance -- the luminous tale of Billy Budd -- and showed that silence is only as worthy as what we can bring back from it.
We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.
Or simply breathe. For silence is responsiveness, and in silence we can listen to something behind the clamor of the world. "A man who loves God, necessarily loves silence,'' wrote Thomas Merton, who was, as a Trappist, a connoisseur, a caretaker of silences. It is no coincidence that places of worship are places of silence: if idleness is the devil's playground, silence may be the angels'. It is no surprise that silence is an anagram of license. And it is only right that Quakers all but worship silence, for it is the place where everyone finds his God, however he may express it. Silence is an ecumenical state, beyond the doctrines and divisions created by the mind. If everyone has a spiritual story to tell of his life, everyone has a spiritual silence to preserve.
So it is that we might almost say silence is the tribute we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred space, just as we slip off shoes. A "moment of silence'' is the highest honor we can pay someone; it is the point at which the mind stops and something else takes over (words run out when feelings rush in). A "vow of silence'' is for holy men the highest devotional act. We hold our breath, we hold our words; we suspend our chattering selves and let ourselves "fall silent,'' and fall into the highest place of all.
It often seems that the world is getting noisier these days: in Japan, which may be a model of our future, cars and buses have voices, doors and elevators speak. The answering machine talks to us, and for us, somewhere above the din of the TV; the Walkman preserves a public silence but ensures that we need never -- in the bathtub, on a mountaintop, even at our desks -- be without the clangor of the world. White noise becomes the aural equivalent of the clash of images, the nonstop blast of fragments that increasingly agitates our minds. As Ben Okri, the young Nigerian novelist, puts it, "When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.''
There is, of course, a place for noise, as there is for daily lives. There is a place for roaring, for the shouting exultation of a baseball game, for hymns and spoken prayers, for orchestras and cries of pleasure. Silence, like all the best things, is best appreciated in its absence: if noise is the signature tune of the world, silence is the music of the other world, the closest thing we know to the harmony of the spheres. But the greatest charm of noise is when it ceases. In silence, suddenly, it seems as if all the windows of the world are thrown open and everything is as clear as on a morning after rain. Silence, ideally, hums. It charges the air. In Tibet, where the silence has a tragic cause, it is still quickened by the fluttering of prayer flags, the tolling of temple bells, the roar of wind across the plains, the memory of chant.
Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to assert itself. We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces that silence brings. "Words, words, words'' commit us to positions we do not really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies, false promises and gossip. We babble with strangers; with intimates we can be silent. We "make conversation'' when we are at a loss; we unmake it when we are alone, or with those so close to us that we can afford to be alone with them.
In love, we are speechless; in awe, we say, words fail us.
Time Magazine, originally published in 1993, republished 2001
Every one of us knows the sensation of going up, on retreat, to a high place and feeling ourselves so lifted up that we can hardly imagine the circumstances of our usual lives, or all the things that make us fret. In such a place, in such a state, we start to recite the standard litany: that silence is sunshine, where company is clouds; that silence is rapture, where company is doubt; that silence is golden, where company is brass.
But silence is not so easily won. And before we race off to go prospecting in those hills, we might usefully recall that fool's gold is much more common and that gold has to be panned for, dug out from other substances. "All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence," wrote Herman Melville, one of the loftiest and most eloquent of souls. Working himself up to an ever more thunderous cry of affirmation, he went on, "Silence is the general consecration of the universe. Silence is the invisible laying on of the Divine Pontiff's hands upon the world. Silence is the only Voice of our God.'' For Melville, though, silence finally meant darkness and hopelessness and self-annihilation. Devastated by the silence that greeted his heartfelt novels, he retired into a public silence from which he did not emerge for more than 30 years. Then, just before his death, he came forth with his final utterance -- the luminous tale of Billy Budd -- and showed that silence is only as worthy as what we can bring back from it.
We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion. Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below our selves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. In silence, we might better say, we can hear someone else think.
Or simply breathe. For silence is responsiveness, and in silence we can listen to something behind the clamor of the world. "A man who loves God, necessarily loves silence,'' wrote Thomas Merton, who was, as a Trappist, a connoisseur, a caretaker of silences. It is no coincidence that places of worship are places of silence: if idleness is the devil's playground, silence may be the angels'. It is no surprise that silence is an anagram of license. And it is only right that Quakers all but worship silence, for it is the place where everyone finds his God, however he may express it. Silence is an ecumenical state, beyond the doctrines and divisions created by the mind. If everyone has a spiritual story to tell of his life, everyone has a spiritual silence to preserve.
So it is that we might almost say silence is the tribute we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred space, just as we slip off shoes. A "moment of silence'' is the highest honor we can pay someone; it is the point at which the mind stops and something else takes over (words run out when feelings rush in). A "vow of silence'' is for holy men the highest devotional act. We hold our breath, we hold our words; we suspend our chattering selves and let ourselves "fall silent,'' and fall into the highest place of all.
It often seems that the world is getting noisier these days: in Japan, which may be a model of our future, cars and buses have voices, doors and elevators speak. The answering machine talks to us, and for us, somewhere above the din of the TV; the Walkman preserves a public silence but ensures that we need never -- in the bathtub, on a mountaintop, even at our desks -- be without the clangor of the world. White noise becomes the aural equivalent of the clash of images, the nonstop blast of fragments that increasingly agitates our minds. As Ben Okri, the young Nigerian novelist, puts it, "When chaos is the god of an era, clamorous music is the deity's chief instrument.''
There is, of course, a place for noise, as there is for daily lives. There is a place for roaring, for the shouting exultation of a baseball game, for hymns and spoken prayers, for orchestras and cries of pleasure. Silence, like all the best things, is best appreciated in its absence: if noise is the signature tune of the world, silence is the music of the other world, the closest thing we know to the harmony of the spheres. But the greatest charm of noise is when it ceases. In silence, suddenly, it seems as if all the windows of the world are thrown open and everything is as clear as on a morning after rain. Silence, ideally, hums. It charges the air. In Tibet, where the silence has a tragic cause, it is still quickened by the fluttering of prayer flags, the tolling of temple bells, the roar of wind across the plains, the memory of chant.
Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to assert itself. We all know how treacherous are words, and how often we use them to paper over embarrassment, or emptiness, or fear of the larger spaces that silence brings. "Words, words, words'' commit us to positions we do not really hold, the imperatives of chatter; words are what we use for lies, false promises and gossip. We babble with strangers; with intimates we can be silent. We "make conversation'' when we are at a loss; we unmake it when we are alone, or with those so close to us that we can afford to be alone with them.
In love, we are speechless; in awe, we say, words fail us.
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