A ‘Lincoln’ Climbs to Top in Elitist S. Korea

SEOUL -- In a country where elites zealously guard their power, the man who won South Korea’s presidential election is a novelty. A maverick who likes to compare himself to Abraham Lincoln, Roh Moo Hyun beat tremendous odds to become a lawyer, then an assemblyman and now the president-elect.

Roh was born in 1946 in the town of Kimhae near the southern city of Pusan into what school records described as “a small farming family of the lower classes who are enthusiastic about education.”

Too poor to afford higher education, Roh attended only high school. He nonetheless managed to teach himself enough law to pass the tough South Korean bar exam. He went into a legal practice in Pusan, where he quickly gained a reputation as a firebrand. His clients included labor activists, radical students who staged a takeover of the U.S. Consulate in Pusan in the 1980s and a student charged with national security violations for his North Korean sympathies.

Roh gained prominence on the national political scene in 1988 when, as a freshman assemblyman, he starred in televised investigations into corruption in South Korea’s military dictatorship. But he broke with his mentor, Kim Young Sam, a former opposition figure and later president, in 1990 to protest a political deal between Kim and the then-ruling conservative party.

Roh’s stand nearly cost him his political career. He lost a race for mayor of Pusan as well as his seat in the National Assembly. He reentered the assembly in 1998, this time in the party of President Kim Dae Jung.

In his presidential campaign, Roh unabashedly praised Kim’s policies, while managing to distance himself from personal scandals that have made Kim deeply unpopular with voters.

Aside from two terms in the assembly, Roh has relatively little experience in the administrative side of government. The only high-level post he has held was an eight-month stint as minister for maritime affairs and fisheries from 2000 to 2001. He has seldom traveled outside South Korea and has never visited the United States, a point of criticism during the campaign.

In a radio interview in April, Roh said he didn’t want to go to the U.S. like other South Korean politicians just to take a picture. “This is a legacy of the colonial mentality -- this idea that a future leader of Korea must be well known in the United States.”

Throughout the campaign, Roh’s views about the United States have been a point of controversy -- and nearly lost him the presidential election. Chung Mong Jun, the backer who repudiated Roh on the eve of the election, said he was withdrawing his support because of a comment by Roh that Chung said suggested that South Korea might have to play a mediating role to prevent the U.S. from starting a war with North Korea.

As recently as 1990, Roh supported calls for the withdrawal of the 37,000 U.S. troops from South Korea, but he says those views have changed.

“I’m not a man of dogma or ideology. You have to make concessions as a responsible politician. If you are too principled, it is not possible to govern. The main principle you have to respect is never to lie,” Roh said in April to The Times.

Roh has also said in interviews that he has great respect for the democratic values of the United States but that he objects to aspects of the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan.

In another controversial position, Roh has pushed for the capital to be moved out of Seoul to ease overcrowding and high real estate prices. And he has also been criticized for his support of tax audits of media companies that have been opposed to the Kim administration.