The Death of Former President Roh

Last Saturday, as I briefly mentioned, the former Korean President Roh committed suicide. This week has been full of news about his death and tributes to his life. Every day my host family and students talked about it. It seems that President Roh was one of Korea's most beloved Presidents, as he was always fighting for the poor people (himself actually being too poor to attend college). Today is the funeral for President Roh and classes were suspended to watch the proceedings in Seoul on TV. It was very touching to see how (most) students were genuinely sad at their country's loss.

Many memorials/temporary shrines have been set up for President Roh across the country. Last night, after getting home sweaty from exercise, my host mom asked me if I would like to go with her to the funeral for President Roh. ("When do we leave?" "In 5 minutes." :-D ) Anyway, I decided that yes, I would like to see what it would be like. After quickly changing we hopped in the car and went to the new downtown area where Suncheon's memorial had been set up. We stood in line for about 45 minutes to get to see the shrine, which included large pictures of the former president, guestbooks to write a message, yellow ribbons with message written on them, large banners with messages (I think provided by businesses?), as well as an alter with his picture and a place to put white carnations. They were passing out carnations for everyone to lay by the alter. There was also a concert going on where people were singing and playing music in memorium to the former president. It was really touching to see how many people showed up to give their condolences to the former president.

(As always at such cultural events, being a foreigner, I was subjected to being treated like a zoo-animal. It is really quite unfortunate that Koreans do not know how to control their exploitation of foreigners. On this particular occassion, this involved the man in charge of lining up the visitors screaming out: "HERE'S A FOREIGNER!" and then the videographer coming and shoving the video camera in my face for a full 10 seconds (bright light and all), after which I politely turned my head to the side to avoid being exploited as "the token foreigner". Then, the camera man, instead of politely leaving me alone, rushed over to a different spot so he could continue stalking me on his camera from the new angle. It really is disappointing that I was treated so rudely and my feelings were disregarded. After all, I was trying to make a nice gestuer and show my respect for their former president who I didn't know and frankly don't care about at all. If Korea wants to keep it's foreign population, it really should learn some mannors.)