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Roh was born on August 6, 1946 to a poor farming family in Gimhae, near Busan, in southeastern South Korea. In 1960, he led a protest in his school against mandatory essays extolling his country's first autocrat. A high school graduate who never went to college, after serving in the Korean army he worked at odd jobs and studied on his own to pass the bar exam in 1975. In 1977 he became regional judge at Daejeon, and began privately practicing tax law in 1978. In 1981, he defended a case against students who had been tortured for possession of contraband literature. In early 2003, he was quoted as saying, "When I saw their horrified eyes and their missing toenails, my comfortable life as a lawyer came to an end." He opposed the autocracy in place at the time in South Korea, and helped lead the pro-democracy June Struggle in 1987 against the authoritarian president Chun Doo-hwan. The following year, he entered politics and "grilled" the government over corruption allegations and a 1980 massacre of protesters. In 1988 he was elected to the National Assembly (of lawmakers) representing the Unification Democratic Party(통일민주당) and shortly after gained popularity in the first parliament hearing which was broadcasted thoughout the nation. In 2000, Roh became the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. In 2001, he was elected to the Supreme Council as a representative of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party.
Roh entered office with an ambitious agenda – establishing Korea as the hub of northeast Asia, continuing the engagement policy or Sunshine policy towards North Korea started by his predecessor Kim Dae-Jung, redefining the security relationship with the United States, reform of contentious politics through compromise, decentralization of government, continuing pressure on chaebol and enhancing corporate transparency, reforming education and tax systems, improvement of labor-management relations. This ambitious program has stalled due to continuing controversy that has plagued Roh’s government, leading to intense criticism both from his supporters, who feel he has not held to his principles, and from those who have opposed his policies from the outset. His administration has been touched by allegations of corruption serious enough for him to propose a referendum on his performance. That proposal having constitutional problems, Roh then offered to step down from office if an investigation showed that his campaign team had illicitly collected as much as one-tenth of the $42 million found to have been illegally raised by the campaign for the opposition Grand National Party.
Roh and his supporters left the Millennium Democratic Party in 2003 and a new party, the Uri Party (우리당 - “Our Party” in Korean) was formed. His conciliatory North Korea policy is controversial with his opponents, and his decision to send troops to Iraq was controversial with his supporters. The country has become polarized over the United States with the young tending to an emotional anti-Americanism (exacerbated by incidents involving US troops stationed in Korea), while the older generation generally views the United States as the South’s staunch ally against the unpredictable North. Controversy within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade led to the replacement of the minister, and a contentious free trade treaty with Chile brought farmers to the streets. The results of an upcoming (April 2004) parliamentary election will set the course for the remainder of his presidency, which ends in 2008.
With First Lady Kwon Yang-sook (권양숙 ; 權良淑), Roh has a daughter (Jeong-yeon (정연), born 1975), an embassy worker; and a son (Geon-ho (건호), born 1973), an electronics conglomerate employee.
See also: Politics of South Korea
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