Like many in his generation, Roh is a veteran of political struggle. Yet until very recently, the democracy he strove to create served him poorly. Over the last 12 years he has lost four of the six elections he’s entered. Even a year ago he was not widely recognized as a rising star in South Korean politics. Then, unexpectedly, the 56-year-old high-school graduate swept the ruling Millennium Democratic Party’s primary and, buoyed by Internet-savvy baby boom-ers born after the Korean War, defeated his conservative opponent to claim victory in last December’s presidential election. On Feb. 25, he will succeed Kim Dae Jung to become his country’s ninth president in a gala Inaugural marking a generational change in South Korean politics.
Roh enters the Blue House with an ambitious domestic agenda. But those plans are overshadowed by a single explosive issue: the North Korean nuclear crisis, which threatens to define, even consume, his presidency. Pyongyang’s belligerence has undermined Roh’s case for continued inter-Korean engagement and strained Seoul’s all-important alliance with Washington. In Seoul for the Inaugural, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell will seek Roh’s help in cooling tensions with the North (the latest shot being a threat to abandon the armistice that ended the Korean War) before any U.S.-led attack on Iraq provokes an even more dramatic gesture.
Intelligence experts fear strongman Kim Jong Il could lash out with a missile test, a declaration of nuclear statehood, or even an underground A-bomb blast. To date, China and Russia have done little to counter Kim’s belligerence. And Roh’s offer to mediate doesn’t sit well in either Washington or Pyongyang; the regime continues to demand “knee-to-knee” talks with the Americans–an end game that makes the Bushies cringe. Unless something changes, Roh could become a bystander in a showdown fought within artillery range of the Blue House.
As a candidate, Roh criticized U.S. President George W. Bush’s tough approach to North Korea and actively courted the anti-American student vote. But in a NEWSWEEK interview last week, he sounded like a man looking to temper his message. “Both in Korea and the United States, there are people who are excessive, even extreme,” he said. At one point he referred to “unilateralist characteristics” in U.S. foreign policy, but when asked to elaborate he leaned back in his chair and took a long pause. “Let’s not go too deep into this,” he said finally. “You have some ideas, and I don’t think it would be good form to confirm them.” A moment later he added: “I have some dissatisfaction with my wife, whom I love very much.”
The familial metaphors are a contrivance, to be sure. But Roh is learning to better navigate the minefield of international diplomacy. That education can’t come too fast for a man recently described by one senior U.S. diplomat in Seoul as less experienced diplomatically than any incoming leader he had ever encountered. Immediately after the election Roh clumsily raised the possibility of U.S. troop withdrawals from South Korea, where some 37,000 American soldiers now serve. Just a few weeks ago an envoy he dispatched to meet senior Bush administration officials in Washington stunned his hosts by asserting that many of his countrymen would rather see North Korea develop nuclear weapons than collapse. Factoring in Roh’s reputation as a left-leaning social activist, commentators in Washington have begun to question Seoul’s loyalty as an ally, and to wonder whether America’s best option on the Korean Peninsula isn’t to beat a hasty retreat.
Part of the problem is unfamiliarity–both on his part and Washington’s. Roh has never visited the United States. And his background–a past his supporters have idealized almost beyond recognition–is a major X-factor in his makeup. Poor boy done good. Selfless legal activist. Political outsider who miraculously rose to national prominence: these oversimplifications speak little about his true character. The White House isn’t alone in its apprehension. During unguarded moments, even Roh’s closest associates admit they’re unsure what kind of president he will make. Hahm Sung Deuk, a presidential scholar at Korea University who was once Roh’s teacher, sees parallels between his former pupil and U.S. President Bill Clinton, an underdog who began his new job with an unrealistically bold agenda. “I foresee trial and error,” he says. “I hope he will make small mistakes, not big mistakes.”
Like many gifted children born poor, Roh’s first ambition was to make something of himself. Unable to afford college, he crammed for South Korea’s rigorous national bar exam, passed it and became a lawyer in 1978. He married his village sweetheart, built a prosperous practice in tax law, and by the age of 40 owned a home, belonged to a yacht club and frequented so-called room salons–South Korea’s version of Japan’s geisha clubs–to relax. He might have kept his law practice if his first mentor hadn’t been involved in politics. In 1981, Kim Guang Il, a fellow lawyer and human-rights activist, pressured Roh to take a sensitive case off his hands. Kim admonished him for his political apathy, says a friend familiar with the story: “He said, ‘I understand what you’re after, but don’t live this kind of life.’ It was a turning point for Roh.”
Roh’s clients, a gang of students at Pusan University, had been arrested for participating in antigovernment activities. Lee, one of the defendants, says agents from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency tortured them to extract confessions of anti-state activities. Their crime: reading books about Chairman Mao and Korean history. During their trial, Roh confronted what many successful South Koreans chose to ignore: that behind their country’s economic miracle was an authoritarian political order that stifled dissent, often brutally. Although the court pronounced his clients guilty, Roh was changed by the experience: he abandoned tax law for human-rights work. Over the next decade he established a center offering workers free legal counsel and helped organize a national, student-led democratic movement. When Chun Doo Hwan’s government finally accepted democratic elections in 1987, Roh ran for the National Assembly, winning a seat representing Pusan.
But his political star fell just as fast as it rose. Sidelined by the opposition party’s factional politics, Roh lost a series of elections in the 1990s. Nevertheless, his writings make it clear his eyes were set on the Blue House as many as 10 years ago. His first book, a 1994 autobiography entitled “Dear Wife, Please Help Me,” is a confessional work inspired by his wife, Kwon Yang Sook, who urged him to stay out of politics. According to an editor, Roh’s first draft had a lot of material about public policy–“what I would do if I were president, that kind of stuff”–none of which was included because the publisher decided readers wouldn’t care. But the book eventually did contain a number of surprises: Roh admits, for example, that he once charged a client excessive legal fees and, in an astonishingly frank entry, that he beat his wife, an act he calls “shameful.” His political advisers cite the book to explain how Roh, like U.S. President George W. Bush, who quit drinking and cleaned up his life in middle age, was “born again” through political activism.
Indeed, Roh’s agenda bears homage in more than one way to the United States. It begins with a Blue House reorganization that is modeled on the White House. To make his headquarters more efficient and accessible, Roh will shrink his own office by two thirds, making room for senior secretaries currently housed in a separate building. A new pressroom will be added, and the old system that restricted access to a cozy crew from the major news outlets has been amended to allow more journalists, including foreigners, to attend briefings.
Those who visit the place won’t find politics as usual. In a move that has shocked many conservative Koreans, Roh has offered Blue House jobs to the same band of rebels that has faithfully served him for years. Of the 30-odd secretaries he has appointed, a third (including Lee) served jail terms for resisting authoritarian rule. Their average age is about 40, a full decade younger than the outgoing staff, and few have any experience as bureaucrats. Their issues, too, are decidedly more progressive: they advocate expanded rights for laborers, higher taxes for owners of large industrial groups and new laws to enable class-action lawsuits against major corporations. They’ve even embraced a scheme to move the central government to the outskirts of Daejon, a city two hours away. The goal is to weaken the concentration of wealth and power in Seoul through massive resource transfers.
Long before he moves the capital, though, Roh will have to find a way to deal with Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. His aides say that he plans to appoint more-experienced and pragmatic politicians to sensitive posts like defense and foreign affairs. Yet despite his desire to mend fences with Washington, Roh hasn’t abandoned his bottom line on the standoff with Pyongyang: that dialogue, not bullying, is the best road to a peaceful outcome. He’ll reiterate that message when he visits the White House, probably by May. “I have two points to make to President Bush, and they are related,” he told NEWSWEEK. “I want to stress that North Korea was opening up and that it is already changing. If we give them what they desperately want–regime security, normal treatment and economic assistance–they will be willing to give up their nuclear ambitions. We should not, therefore, treat them as criminals but as counterparts for dialogue.”
Yet even at home, engagement is losing its luster, thanks to an unfolding cash-for-summit scandal that threatens to destroy President Kim’s legacy as a peacemaker. After denying the allegations for two years, Kim admitted in February that he was aware of some $200 million in payments made to North Korea by the chaebol Hyundai on the eve of his historic trip to Pyongyang in 2000. That event–the first inter-Korean summit since the war–won Kim the Nobel Peace Prize and helped legitimize Northern dictator Kim Jong Il as a viable partner for talks. The revelations have already diminished the event’s historic stature, causing collateral damage to Roh’s presidency even before it has begun. As early as this week, lawmakers in the majority Grand National Party are expected to propose a bill creating an independent counsel to investigate the scandal. One of Roh’s first official acts could be to veto it, a move likely to prompt the GNP to stall confirmation of key cabinet appointments. “This could haunt him from the very first day he takes office,” says Lee Chung Min, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul. “If the money is proven to have been spent on weapons, then it could shake his engagement policy to its base.”
Roh can’t afford to start off like Clinton. South Korea’s unique presidency, which limits each leader to a single five-year term, gives few second chances. He needs to establish a serviceable relationship with President Bush, to work together with Washington to contain the North Korean nuclear crisis and to advance his domestic political agenda in ways that enhance his party’s power ahead of next year’s parliamentary election. It’s a daunting task. No doubt Roh will soon recall how nerve-racking it can be behind the wheel.
