The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [214]
Roh was summoned for interrogation by prosecutors on November 15 and jailed on corruption charges the following day. Prosecutors soon extended their investigation to his predecessor Chun, who refused to cooperate and, like Roh, destroyed the account books of contributors to his off-the-books funds. According to prosecutors, Chun collected 950 billion won ($1.8 billion) in slush funds-nearly twice as much as Roh-and left office with 212 billion won ($265 million). Chun later admitted in court that as president he gave 197 billion won to Roh for his 1987 election campaign. An aide testified he and the wives of both men were present when Chun personally handed over the majority of this illicit funding.
In an episode with almost as much popular impact as the overall size of the financial dealings, prosecutors discovered hundreds of stacks of 10,000-won notes belonging to Chun, totalling 6.1 billion won, stuffed into 25 apple boxes in the cement warehouse of the Ssangyong group, a Seoul conglomerate. Photographs of this mother lode of currency, prominently published and broadcast by the Korean press, disgusted the public.
Almost all the funds had come from leaders of Korea's vaunted chaebol conglomerates and other big business enterprises, whose executives had been called to meetings with Roh in an annex of the presidential residence on a regular basis and who had been expected to bring money. Business leaders insisted the payments were the equivalent of taxes, simply the cost of doing business in Korea, where presidents and their administrations were all-powerful arbiters of tax policy, loan funds, public contracts, and much more.
The chairman of the Kukje group, which had been one of South Korea's largest conglomerates in the early 1980s, recalled how Chun suggested he give $2.6 million to one of the then-First Lady's favorite charities. After the businessman declined, his bank credit was cut off at Blue House orders, and Chun's finance minister announced that Kukje was being dissolved because of insufficient financial backingall of which quickly led to the firm's bankruptcy. Few tycoons were ready to risk such treatment.
In one of the rare specific revelations prior to the 1995 scandal, Hyundai group founder Chung Ju Yung said in early 1992 of his visits to Roh, "At first I gave him two to three billion won each time, but as I felt it was not enough, I gave him another five billion won and then, two years ago, the last time, I gave him ten billion won." Roh responded by saying he had received and spent Chung's funds to help "unfortunate neighbors." When Chung came to Washington in September 1992 as a maverick presidential candidate, he told me and other Washington Post editors and reporters that Roh was even more corrupt than Chun Doo Hwan had been. I found this hard to believe at the time and, to my regret, did not report this remark in my story on the meeting or press the industrialist for details.
As the furor following Roh's arrest continued, and with his own victorious presidential campaign suspect for taking some of Roh's money, President Kim Young Sam came under pressure to take stronger action. Earlier, Kim had taken the position that the December 12, 1979, military-backed takeover by Chun and Roh and the May 1980 killing of civilians in Kwangju did not warrant prosecution but should be left to "the judgment of history." After the scandal broke, Kim abruptly reversed his stand. With the backing of both the president and the opposition parties, a special law authorizing legal action against those responsible