By Li Hongmei People's Daily Online

South Korea's former president Roh Moo-hyun threw himself off a cliff on Saturday, sending a political earthquake to the Asia's fledgling democracy. His supporters vented much of their spleen on the country's prosecutors, conservative media and, the sitting president Lee Myung-bak.

On the surface, Mr. Roh was driven to suicide by humiliating bribery allegations. But what lies behind his dramatic death could be far more complex than a once-for-all solution to his life and shame. Many presumed it was the country's omnipotent prosecutors and conservative forces that had in collusion pushed him and his family too hard in pursuing the corruption scandal, and some even accused the Blue House, South Korea's presidential palace, of orchestrating the investigation just out of a political vendetta.

What's more, some Western media also commented that Mr. Roh had been victimized by a substandard democracy, which seemingly cannot hold water. Democracy is in essence just a political existence. Thus, whether it be a young one or already in full size, and double-edged weapon as it may be, democracy would not act of its own accord, or function in the way completely independent of human agents. Roh's suicide is, as it was, the continuation of the South Korea's political legacies, or simply put, Mr. Roh was killed by political infighting.

It has long been a notorious political habit since the country's authoritarian past that the incumbent president would preside over investigations of his predecessor and try to gain support by punishing him. Even if the dictatorship ended in early 1990s, S. Korea has all along carried on the tendency to define a presidency by the failings of the one that came before.

Many political experts also remarked the struggle to shed the authoritarian past in South Korea was far from finished, as manifested by the public reaction toward Roh's suicide, which has unleashed a renewed wave of sympathy for a former president, although he used to alienate many supporters by implementing some unpopular policies and had been bogged down in bribery scandals by the moment when he leapt from a hilltop near his home.

Before his falling into a ravine, the 62-year-old former president had been under the investigation for receiving millions of dollars in bribes from a wealthy businessman while in office. Be that as it may, he would be remembered by his fellow countrymen as a human rights defender who had led the ‘June Struggle' in 1987 against the then dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan. After Chun had been pushed out of office, Roh entered politics by winning election to the National Assembly as a member of pro-democracy party led by the activist Kim Young-sam, who later became president.

In 2003, Roh, a self-educated lawyer born to a poor peasant's family, won the presidency and within a year of taking office, he formed the Uri Party (Our Party). He had since undertaken an arduous political journey, and his term in office also proved to be a rollercoaster ride. Some of his unpopular decisions, including sending troops to Iraq, the policy of engagement with North Korea, and some of his aggressive reformist agenda, quickly sent his popularity ratings plummeting. While on the other hand, during his administration, the Korea Peninsular was tranquil, and the relationship with China made a substantial progress, which has proved to be a win-win deal viewed in a long term and from a strategic height; and meanwhile, he kept the relations between allies on a relatively sound track, even if there were still many resenting the situation that the South Korea was sandwiched in between the U.S. and Japan.

Although he was by no means considered a hard line politician, he did emerge in 2003 as a new start the country needed—his humble beginnings, his relative youth, and his promises to root out the country's endemic political corruption. It could serve as the final version in people's memory of him as an eloquent lawyer when in 1988 he grilled top officials from the previous administration during a special parliamentary hearing on graft.

Ironically, Mr. Roh was helped to leadership by a public disillusionment with the political scandal, but it was scandal and political infighting that also blighted his political ambition and rushed a conclusion to his life.