NYT "이 대통령, 퇴임 직후 정치보복 당할 가능성"
"대중의 분노는 청와대와 검찰의 수상한 유착관계로 쏠리고 있다"
기사입력 2009-05-25 오후 2:57:07
한국 국민들이 노무현 전 대통령을 추모하며 하얀 국화꽃을 바치고 있다. 많은 사람들은 노 전 대통령과 가족들에 대해 끈질기게 부패 혐의로 공격해온 검찰과 보수 언론들에게 분노를 퍼붓고 있다. 이명박 대통령이 검찰 조사를 지휘했다며 비난하는 사람들도 많이 있다.
일각에서는 노 전 대통령이 현직 대통령이 전임 대통령에 대한 검찰 조사를 지휘하는 '관행'의 희생양이 됐다는 점에서 깊은 우려를 나타내고 있다.
강원택 숭실대 정치학과 교수는 "전임 대통령을 처벌함으로써 정치적 지지를 획득하려는 행태가 한국의 대통령들의 나쁜 관행이 됐다"면서 "노 전 대통령의 비극은 이런 관행을 타파할 계기라는 것을 보여준다"고 말했다.
하지만 정치전문가들, 심지어 일반적인 한국인들 중에는 과거 독재정권을 청산하려는 국민적 투쟁은 결코 사라지지 않을 것이며, 노 전 대통령에 대한 검찰 조사는 최소한 두 가지 다른 문제점을 부각시켰다고 지적하는 사람들이 많다.
강력한 대통령제, 그리고 견제와 균형의 원리가 거의 작동하지 않는 사법체제 특히 검찰의 존재다.
"대중의 분노, 청와대와 대검찰청의 수상한 관계에 초점"
노 전 대통령의 서거 이후 대중의 분노는 주로 청와대와 대검찰청의 수상한 유착관계에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 이런 의혹은 과거 독재정권 시절에 정적 숙청에 검찰이 동원된 경험과 연결돼 있다.
문정인 연세대 정치학과 교수는 "검찰은 한국 사회에서 가장 무소불위의 권력이 되었다"면서 "이런 권력은 지금도 영향을 미치는 독재시절의 유산"이라고 지적했다.
문 교수는 노 전 대통령이 사실상 검찰의 권력을 강화시킨 결과를 불렀다고 말했다. 그나마 검찰을 견제했던 국정원의 역할을 약화시켰기 때문이다.
노 전 대통령은 검찰을 통제하려고 했으나 역부족이었고, 청와대와 검찰의 결속을 약화시키면서도 검찰의 권력 일부를 경찰에 넘기거나, 검찰의 활동을 감독할 사법기구도 만드는 것도 하지 못했다.
노 전 대통령의 서거를 애도하는 많은 사람들은 그가 전임자들이 저지른 비리와 비교할 때 작은 잘못으로 보이는 일로 너무 큰 대가를 치렀다고 느끼는 것 같다.
그들은 노 전 대통령이 퇴임한 이후 끈질기게 부패 혐의로 노 전 대통령을 공격한 검찰과 보수 언론들에 대해 분노하고 있다.
또한 그들은 이명박 현 대통령이 검찰의 수사에 가이드라인을 제시하거나 최소한 부추겼다고 비난하고 있다.
보험설계사로 일하는 이동준(31) 씨는 "노 전 대통령은 부패한 또 한 명의 대통령이 아니다. 그는 달랐다"면서 "반면에 이명박은 독재자처럼 행동하고 있다. 한국의 민주주의는 30년 전으로 후퇴했다"고 말했다.
정치학자들 "이 대통령과 검찰에 역풍 닥칠 가능성"
정치학자들은 노 전 대통령의 자살이 이 대통령, 그리고 검찰에게까지 역풍을 불러 일으킬 가능성이 있다고 말한다.
노 전 대통령의 참모이기도 했던 문 교수는 국회가 검찰의 수사 경위, 그리고 불확실한 혐의 사실을 언론에 흘린 행위 등에 대해 공식 조사를 할 수 있을 것이라고 말했다.
문 교수는 "이번 사태를 계기로 전밍 대통령에 대한 정치 보복의 악순환이 단절될지는 두고봐야 할 것"이라면서 "하지만 이명박이 물러나는 2012년 전에 보복이 끝날지는 장담할 수 없다"고 덧붙였다.
일부 노 전 대통령의 지지자들은 정반대의 보복이 일어날 가능성을 얘기하고 있다. 노 전 대통령의 자살로 이명박 대통령 역시 퇴임하자마자 비슷한 공격에 직면하리라는 것은 거의 틀림없어졌다는 것이다.
SEOUL, South Korea — As South Koreans laid white chrysanthemums at makeshift memorials for their former president, Roh Moo-hyun, many said Sunday that the once-popular champion of clean government had been driven to suicide by more than humiliating bribery allegations.
Skip to next paragraphLee Jin-man/Associated PressA South Korean woman touches a portrait of former President Roh Moo-hyun at Jogye temple in Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday.
They directed much of their ire at the prosecutors and conservative media who relentlessly pursued the accusations of corruption against Mr. Roh and his family. Many accused the current president, Lee Myung-bak, of orchestrating the investigation, a move that could become a political liability for him.
Others expressed deeper misgivings that Mr. Roh was a victim of the legacies of South Korea’s authoritarian past — most notably the near ritual of incumbent presidents presiding over investigations of their predecessors.
“It has become a bad political habit for presidents in South Korea to try to gain support by punishing the former president,” said Kang Won-taek, a politics professor at Seoul’s Soongsil University. “What happened to Roh Moo-hyun shows that it is time to break this habit.”
The tendency to define a presidency by the failings of the one that came before took root as the country struggled to redefine itself in the early 1990s as a young democracy after years of dictatorships. Many Koreans were exhilarated as the first democratically elected governments punished the men who had resisted democracy for so long.
The sight of former President Chun Doo-hwan — a military ruler blamed for a crackdown of pre-democracy protesters that ended in 200 deaths — being paraded in a prison jumpsuit proved cathartic for the nation.
But political experts, and even many average Koreans, say that their nation’s struggle to shed its authoritarian past was never finished, and that investigation of Mr. Roh highlighted at least two other legacies: a powerful presidency and a justice system with few checks and balances, especially on its prosecutors.
At least so far, the subject of Mr. Roh’s culpability has been put aside, overwhelmed by the shock and sadness over his dramatic death on Saturday, when he threw himself off a cliff. In the weeks before that, he acknowledged that a businessman who supported him had given more than $6 million to his wife and son and his brother’s son-in-law while he was in office, but he denied that they were bribes. He said he did not know about the transactions until he left office.
The money for his wife had been used to pay for his son’s tuition at Stanford University, among other things, according to a top aide. In a country where education is key to social status, Mr. Roh, a self-educated lawyer, never won full respect from many people, despite having become a lawyer and the leader of a powerful economy.
Much of the outpouring of public anger since Mr. Roh’s death has focused on the murky ties between the Blue House, as the president’s office is called, and the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, which led the investigation into Mr. Roh and other former presidents. These suspicions are also a hangover from the pre-democracy days, when prosecutors were seen as military henchmen, using the legal system to attack their political opponents.
“The prosecutors have become the most omnipotent force in Korean society today,” said Moon Chung-in, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul and former adviser to Mr. Roh. “Their strength is a legacy of dictatorship that still affects us.”
Mr. Moon said that Mr. Roh actually ended up strengthening the power of prosecutors by weakening one check on their power: the National Intelligence Service, the South Korean spy service used by military rulers against South Korea’s citizens. Mr. Roh appointed a former human rights lawyer as its director and curtailed many of its internal surveillance activities.
Mr. Roh also tried to rein in the prosecutors, but with less success. Though he weakened links between prosecutors and the Blue House, he failed to pass some of their powers to the police or create grand juries to oversee investigations.
In 2003, his first year in office, Mr. Roh also held a widely watched public debate with 10 prosecutors in which he called the prosecutors office a “powerful organization” that the Justice Ministry had “failed to rein in.”
Mr. Roh also came to office with promises to break the cycle of corruption that has plagued South Korean presidents, and made them vulnerable to investigation. He also vowed to curtail the powers of South Korea’s presidency and sever its links with the country’s “chaebol,” or big-business conglomerates.
Mr. Roh’s death unleashed a renewed wave of sympathy for a former president who had alienated many supporters by signing a free-trade agreement with the United States and seeming to bungle economic policy.
Many of the thousands who turned out at makeshift altars in front of an ancient palace in central Seoul seemed to feel that Mr. Roh had paid too high a price for a relatively petty infraction.
Many noted that Mr. Chun and his successor as president, Roh Tae-woo, were found guilty of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars of bribes while in office. Sons of the first two civilian presidents of the era, Kim Young-san and Kim Dae-jung, were also imprisoned for pocketing millions of dollars from large companies.
The mourners lashed out at the prosecutors and the conservative media who had relentlessly pursued accusations of corruption for the past year, after Mr. Roh had left office. Most also accused the sitting president, Mr. Lee, of guiding or at least encouraging the investigations. In Mr. Roh’s native village, Bongha, his supporters trampled a funeral wreath sent by the president.
“President Roh was not just another corrupt president. He was different,” said Lee Dong-joon, 31, an insurance planner. “But Lee Myung-bak is acting the same as the dictators. Our democracy has been set back 30 years.”
The former president, who had prided himself on being above South Korea’s corruption, could no longer eat or focus on his favorite pastime of late-night reading, said aides. In his suicide note, Mr. Roh apologized for disappointing supporters.
Political scientists said the suicide could cause a backlash against President Lee or even the prosecutors. Mr. Moon, the former Roh adviser, said the National Assembly might formally investigate the prosecutors, and the apparent press leaks of questionable allegations, which increased the pressure on Mr. Roh.
“Let’s see if this breaks the cycle of political vendettas” against former presidents, Mr. Moon said. “But we won’t know for sure if the vendettas are over until 2012, when Lee Myung-bak steps down.” Some supporters who gathered in Seoul said they thought the opposite would happen: that Mr. Roh’s suicide almost guaranteed that the current president would also face similar attacks once he leaves office.



