Scrutinizing Ex-Presidents Has Long History
By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
Former President Roh Moo-Hyun is reportedly fuming over Cheong Wa Dae's allegation that Roh's political aides illegally removed sensitive state information from the presidential office's computer servers.
The former President has called the ongoing inquiry by Cheong Wa Dae both intrusive and excessive.
President Lee Myung-bak's administration is charging that former President Roh and his advisers ``clearly committed illegal acts." The Lee administration is alleging that Roh's outgoing political aides took with them large amounts of top-level information from Cheong Wa Dae's computer servers.
Former President Roh issued a statement over the weekend, saying that there was nothing sensitive or illegal about taking a copy of his administration's records from computer servers.
During a conversation last Friday with Song Young-gil, a senior member of the main opposition Democratic Party, Roh reportedly said the Lee administration's conduct over this issue was ``contemptible" and that the current government is simply trying to find dirt on the former President.
``What the current administration is saying about me is really far from the truth. They are lying," the former President said. ``Am I not supposed to look at my own administrative records? All I have are just copies of the originals."
Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said Sunday that the former President should return the copied documents to the government.
A look at Korean presidential histories shows that what Roh is facing is nothing new. In fact, some of his predecessors faced grave consequences following government inquiries.
Former Korean Presidents often had testy relationships with incoming administrations. New governments often initiated inquiries into former Presidents' past conduct and in a number of cases, such hearings led to legal prosecution and guilty verdicts.
When Kim Young-sam came into office in 1993, his administration took aim at illegal political slush funds that had been set up by former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo. The investigation and courtroom prosecution into these cases concluded that the two former Presidents had raised tens of millions of dollars in unlawful slush funds. Both Chun and Roh served jail time following their guilty verdicts.
When Kim Dae-jung took office in 1998, his administration charged the Kim Young-sam administration of incompetent governance and policymaking that led to South Korea's financial crisis in 1997. Many of Kim Young-sam's top deputies faced intense scrutiny over their alleged mismanagement.
When Roh Moo-hyun came into power in 2003, the focus was on Kim Dae-jung's first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000 and whether undue financial rewards were offered to North Korea to win over Pyongyang's participation.