南韓總統盧武鉉從意外當選、掀起戰後嬰兒潮的支持，對南韓政治投入一個不可知的變數，最後卻因為他的發言經常充滿挑釁，說的多做的少，對人民生活的改善付諸闕如，聲望大幅下滑，而成為票房毒票，不得不退黨，以求他所屬的政黨在二ＯＯ八年選舉存活。
盧和過去的總統不一樣，過去南韓總統總是充滿獨裁、腐敗收場，盧像是一個政治外人，進入圈子後，對南韓政治帶來不同氣象，新聞可以隨時批評總統，腐化的情形較少，而，他主張的反美、親北韓，帶來年輕一代的支持也引來保守派的打伐。靠年輕世代、網路當選的他，很意外當選，卻也在二ＯＯ四年的國會大選中，為他的黨贏得勝利。
但是，他出言大膽，總是惹起爭議，現在人民認為他談話太多，做法挑釁、粗糙、對一個國家領袖而言太過大膽不適當，最重要的是，他所受到的民眾支持，並沒有將之化為經濟成果來改善人民生活，房價直直上升、工作愈來愈難找，這些導致他的聲望一落千丈。
（某些部分是不是有似曾相識之感？）
South Korean president to quit governing party
By Choe Sang-Hun
Thursday, February 22, 2007 SEOUL: Even by the standards of South Korea’s turbulent politics, the reversals in President Roh Moo Hyun’s fortunes have been dramatic. Not even the recent breakthrough deal to shut down North Korea’s nuclear program, a seeming lift for his longstanding policy of reconciliation with Pyongyang, restored his popularity.
Thursday night he announced he would soon leave his Uri Party, acknowledging that he had become a political liability in advance of the December presidential poll.
Five years ago, Roh pulled off perhaps the most stunning election victory in the nation’s history when, as maverick with no faction of his own, he won the presidency — a meteoric ascent that he said surprised even him.
But after hardly a year in office, Roh became the first South Korean president to be impeached by Parliament, while his popularity plummeted. Then, not only did he survive the impeachment, but he managed to propel his minority party to a sweeping victory in the 2004 elections. People cheered on Roh Jjang, or ”Our Captain Roh.”
Three years later, lawmakers of the Uri Party were deserting him like ”a chicken with bird flu,” as one Uri lawmaker, Cho Il Hyun, put it. If politicians stuck with Roh, whose approval ratings hover around 20 percent, they risked being culled and buried with him in the coming elections, Cho was quoted as saying in The Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
Since late January, Cho and 30 other lawmakers quit the Uri Party, including 23 who quit on Feb. 6, stripping it of a parliamentary majority Roh would need to push through major reform bills in his last year in office. More legislators hinted they planned to follow suit.
Thursday night, Roh told Uri leaders at a dinner meeting that he ”felt compelled to remove a source of conflict.” Noting that he has become a stumbling block for his party’s unity, Roh said he would leave the party soon to allow it to regroup before the election.
”I have already said that I would decide on this issue in a way that helps the party,” Roh said.
The disarray around Roh has given the conservative opposition a chance to end a decade of liberal rule in South Korea, analysts say. His five-year term ends in February 2008 and he cannot run for re-election.
”We are standing in the middle of a desert with no road in sight — we need a compass,” said Chung Sye Kyun, Roh’s minister of commerce who was elected the new head of the Uri Party at its annual convention last week.
South Korea’s expected resumption of large aid shipments to the North following the recent nuclear agreement is likely to sharpen the political divide here. Roh said last week that North Korea should be ”given all it demands if that helps resolve the nuclear problem.” Conservatives charge that Roh will make excessive concessions to the North to secure a diplomatic triumph in an election year.
Over the years, South Koreans have faulted their presidents for dictatorial rule, corruption or mismanaging the economy. But until Roh, they had rarely complained that their typically solemn presidents talked too much. South Koreans have come to regard him as someone who not only says too much, but does so provocatively, recklessly, with a bluntness inappropriate for a national leader, while doing little to improve their daily lives, political analysts say.
Just three months after taking office, he startled citizens by saying he feared he could ”no longer stand being president.”
”I say what I have to say as president, but I get into trouble because some of my language is unconstrained,” Roh said at a cabinet meeting on Dec. 26. ”I know I’m to blame for making myself everyone’s favorite target for criticism. But I also consider this a price I have to pay for democracy.”
Roh’s ups and downs mirror the alternating hope and disillusionment of South Koreans who elected an untested outsider in the expectation that he would revamp the staid and corruption-ridden political order that had governed South Korea since its birth at the end of World War II.
Roh’s two democratic predecessors, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung, came to power by fighting against and striking deals with the military strongmen, but they were part of the old game. They were charismatic bosses whose political fortunes rested on support from their home provinces and who were accused of stoking regional rivalry — the bane of South Korean politics. They presided over an electorate that remembered the Korean War and appreciated the alliance with the United States.
”By contrast, Roh was the first president in South Korea who didn’t have imperial power,” said Hahm Sung Deuk, a political scientist at Korea University in Seoul.
The son of a poor farmer and a graduate of a vocational school who became a self-taught human rights lawyer, Roh owed his election victory in part to a support network that emerged on the Internet.
Middle-aged voters who had attended college during the military dictatorships of the 1970s and ’80s rallied around Roh, who had defended student and labor activists as a lawyer and, while a legislator, once hurled his nameplate at the former military dictator Chun Doo Hwan during a parliamentary hearing. Roh, his statements often rich with vulgarities, vowed not to ”kowtow to the Americans” and called for ”an era when not just the Americans and Europeans but also the Asians will play a main role in the world.”
Since his election, Roh has challenged some of the guiding precepts of the old political elite with colorfully undiplomatic, even raw, statements.
In December, he mocked critics of his attempts to reduce South Korea’s military dependence on the United States as ”clinging to the pants of the United States.”
”Hiding behind the Americans’ backside, and saying, ’Big Brother! We trust you!’ — can this be the right attitude on security for the people of a sovereign country?” Roh said.
The same month he said of Japan and China: ”In olden days, we Koreans were squeezed between Japan and China. Whenever Japan was unified and strong, they came over here and trampled on our people and ran amok. Whenever a new dynasty emerged in China, the Chinese came over here and wreaked havoc. Now we are strong enough to prevent such things from happening.”
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