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Ex-Leader's Suicide Shakes Up S. Korea

AFTERMATH

Saturday was a day of mourning for Roh.

After South Korea's disgraced former president threw himself off a cliff on Saturday, South Koreans are grappling with the questions left behind. Roh Moo-hyun entered the national stage as a crusader who would put an end to corruption ("Mr. Clean"), but left office disgraced after becoming mixed up in a bribery scandal. "But he left so many questions about the influence of people around him and whether he himself was corrupt," Kim Seung-hwan, a senior research associate in International Studies, tells the Los Angeles Times. "For Koreans, he left behind a lot of frustration." Prosecutors were expected to indict Roh in a couple of days over accepting $6 million in bribes from a shoe tycoon. Roh left a brief note on his computer: "The pain that I caused to so many people is too great. The pain in the coming days is unfathomable. Don't be sorry. Don't blame anyone. It's destiny."

Read it at Los Angeles Times

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