PRESIDENT::Roh Moo-hyun

Roh Moo-hyun (born September 1, 1946 in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang) has been the President of South Korea since February 25, 2003. Before entering politics, Roh was a noted human rights lawyer.

Personal background
With First Lady Kwon Yang-sook (권양숙), Roh has a daughter (Roh Jeong-yeon, 노정연, born 1975), an embassy worker; and a son (Roh Geon-ho, 노건호, born 1973), a former LG Electronics employee and a current MBA student at Stanford University. Roh is a Roman Catholic, like his predecessor, Kim Dae-Jung.
Roh was born in 1946 to a poor farming family in Gimhae, near Busan, in southeastern South Korea. In 1960, he led a protest at his school against mandatory essays extolling his country's first autocrat. A high school graduate who never went to college, he worked at odd jobs after serving in the Korean army.
He studied on his own to pass the bar exam in 1975. In 1977, he became regional judge in Daejeon, and began privately practising tax law in 1978. In 1981, he defended 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 participated in the pro-democracy June Struggle in 1987 against the authoritarian president.

Early political career

In 1988, Roh entered politics and grilled the government over corruption allegations and the 1980 Gwangju Massacre. In the same year, he was elected to the National Assembly of South Korea, representing the Unification Democratic Party (통일민주당- Tongilminjudang). Shortly thereafter, he gained popularity in the first nationally broadcast parliament hearing.
Roh's defeat in the April 2000 election in Busan was a "blessing in disguise." The news of his defeat prompted his supporters nationwide to form Nosamo, the first political fan club in Korea. His supporters were inspired by the courage and commitment shown in his struggle against regionalism.
Roh was appointed as the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries in August 2000. He was elected the presidential candidate of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party in a land slide victory, eventually winning the presidency on December 19, 2002, defeating Lee Hoi-chang of the Grand National Party by a narrow margin. His victory was a dramatic surprise, made possible by a last-minute betrayal by a political ally that backfired.