Former South Korean President Roh Commits Suicide

Former S. Korean President Roh Moo-hyun toasting with Hun Sen

23 May 2009
By VOA News

A top aide told to former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun says he appears to have committed suicide.

Moon Jae-in told reporters Mr. Roh left a suicide note before he hiked up a mountain near his home Saturday morning and jumped to his death.

Police say Mr. Roh suffered severe head injuries in the fall and died after being transported from his home town of Gimhae to a hospital in Busan in the southern part of the country.

Authorities say they are investigating the circumstances behind the death.

Mr. Roh, who was 63 years old, served as president from 2003 to 2008 and was elected on a platform of anti-corruption.

Earlier this month, he was questioned about allegations that he took more than $6 million in bribes from a businessman while in office. He admitted that his wife took an unspecified amount of money as a loan to pay off debts, but denied that he was aware of it in advance.

Mr. Roh rose to prominence as a human rights lawyer, defending students accused of treason during South Korea's military rule in the 1980s.

He built a reputation for challenging the authority of then-military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. In 1987, he was arrested and suspended from his law practice on charges of supporting a strike by workers at a shipyard.

Mr. Roh was the youngest son of a peasant family from the southeastern part of the country. He had no formal education beyond high school and studied law on his own.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

S.Korean president expresses condolences to victims of Cambodian air crash

June 28, 2007

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun on Wednesday expressed his condolences to the families of the victims of a Cambodian air crash.

"I offer my deep condolences to the families of the 13 South Korean victims on behalf of the government," Roh was quoted by his spokesman as saying, while asking the government to take thorough measures to cope with the aftermath of the accident.

At a message to the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Roh thanked him for personally overseeing the rescue operations, and asked for his continued support in the remaining procedures, said Roh's spokesman Cheon Ho-seon.

A total of 22 people, including 13 South Koreans and nine passengers and crewmembers of other countries were found dead Wednesday in the wreckage of a PMT Air plane that crashed in a mountain jungle Tuesday during its flight from Siem Reap to the coastal resort of Sihanoukville.

Source: Xinhua

Bodies of S. Korean passengers from crash site transported to Phnom Penh

PHNOM PENH/SEOUL, June 27
Yonhap News

Search and rescue teams on Wednesday transported the bodies of all 22 victims of a plane crash, including 13 South Koreans, to a hospital in Phnom Penh from the crash site in southern Cambodia. The Cambodian plane that disappeared off radar two days ago was found in a jungle in Cambodia's Kampot Province earlier in the day along with the bodies, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said in Seoul.

"The Cambodian government has given us official notification that all 13 South Korean passengers have been killed," Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Hee-yong said in a press briefing.

Also aboard the Russian-made An-24 plane operated by Cambodia's PMT Air were three Czech tourists, a Russian co-pilot and five Cambodian crew members, according to officials.

The bodies of the 13 South Koreans were expected to be sent to the mortuary of a hospital in the Cambodian capital within the day.

There, a South Korean medical team will conduct forensic examinations on the bodies for identification.

Despite the crash, the team will likely be able to identify the bodies easily because they are not badly decomposed, a South Korean official said.

The South Korean Embassy in Phnom Penh set up an altar for the deceased South Koreans at the hospital. A group of family members of the South Korean passengers, who arrived in Phnom Penh from Seoul on Tuesday to await news of the fate of their kin, was expected to arrive at the hospital.

The plane is believed to have crashed about 50 minutes after its departure from an airport in Siem Reap, home of the famous Angkor Wat temple, en route to the coastal resort city of Sihanoukville.

The actual cause of the accident is still under investigation, while aviation officials here say it could take weeks, if not months, to decode the black box flight recorder. Cambodian officials said earlier in the day they had recovered the black box from the passenger plane.

According to officials, the crash may have resulted from pilot negligence. Oh Gab-riel, who was in Phnom Penh as the head of a fact-finding team from the South Korean government, said he has confirmed that the control tower in the Sihanoukville airport warned the pilot that the plane "was flying at a too low altitude" shortly before the plane went missing on Monday.

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun expressed his condolences to the family members of the Korean passengers.

"I offer my deep condolences to the families of the 13 South Korean victims on behalf of the government," Roh was quoted as saying by Cheon Ho-seon, a spokesman at Cheong Wa Dae.

Roh also instructed the government "to extend the family members full support and take care of the situation in due course," Cheon said.

The president also sent Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen a message of gratitude for taking the lead in the search and rescue efforts, and asked the prime minister for further cooperation. Hun Sen personally led the efforts since Tuesday.

Hun Sen earlier in the day sent a message of condolence to Roh and the family members over the tragedy, Cheon said.