The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [213]
Assemblyman Park, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, had long opposed the pervasive influence of illegal money in Korean politics. His indignation had been rekindled two months earlier when a government minister had told reporters that a former president had hidden 400 billion won ($500 million) in accounts at city banks, only to be fired for his indiscretion. Now, from the worried businessman Ha, Park obtained a statement of the status of the account, but instead of taking it to be "fixed," he rose on the floor of the National Assembly with the statement in his hand and delivered a bombshell accusation. Roh, he declared, had deposited the equivalent of $500 million in city banks around the time he left office, with 30 billion won ($37 million) deposited in the bank branch where Ha had his account. He then produced Ha's bank account documents as direct evidence of what had been going on.
The day the furor broke out, Roh Tae Woo's longtime chief bodyguard and his last intelligence agency director, Lee Hyun Woo, hurried to see the former president at his home in Seoul. Lee informed his boss that the money being discussed in the National Assembly indeed belonged to Roh-part of the funds that Lee had been managing since the two men had left government. Roh instructed Lee to report the facts to prosecutors but, before doing so, to destroy the account books containing the details of those who had contributed the money.
Eight days after the revelation in the National Assembly, via television from his home, Roh addressed the nation he had led for five years. The former president announced that while in office he had amassed a "governing fund" of 500 billion won ($625 million), an even more stupifying total than had been rumored, and that he had left office with 170 billion won ($212 million) of the money. (The amount was soon corrected to 185 billion won.)
Saying that raising and using such funds was "an old political practice," Roh declared the practice to be wrong and said, "I will wholeheartedly accept any kind of punishment you hand out to me." Roh said he hoped that nobody else, including the entrepreneurs who contributed the funds, would be hurt because of his misdeeds. Wiping tears from his eyes, he ended the broadcast by saying, "I have no other words to say as a man who has deeply hurt the pride of the nation. At this moment, I feel deeply ashamed of being a former president. I offer my apology again."
The gigantic size of the funds involved as well as Roh's retention of massive wealth after leaving office shocked the Korean public. His admissions were in startling contrast to his declarations of the late 1980s, when he pledged to create "a great era of ordinary people" after coming into office a hero for submitting to election by popular vote. Korean newspapers recalled that in his first presidential press conference, Roh had pledged to eliminate all forms of corruption and "to be recorded in history as a faithful and honest president." He declared his total assets then to be about 500 million won ($625,000), one-thousandth of the slush fund he admitted to raising in office. Several weeks after Roh's mea culpa statement, a public opinion poll in Seoul identified Roh as "the most loathsome politician" in the country by an overwhelming margin.
A secondary tremor from Roh's revelations was the announcement the same day by Kim Dae Jung, the opposition leader, that he had secretly accepted 2 billion won ($2.5 million) from Roh as a gift during the 1992 presidential campaign. This admission tarnished Kim's reformist image and also raised immediate questions about how much of Roh's money