THE former president of South Korea leapt to his death from a clifftop yesterday after being caught up in a bribery scandal.

Roh Moo-hyun, 62, left a suicide note that was read out on television. “It has been so hard for me,” it said. “I caused many people trouble. Raise me a shrine in the village.”

Early yesterday morning Roh went hiking in mountains near his modest village home. He distracted his only companion and then jumped.

He was taken to hospital in the southern city of Busan, where doctors tried for almost an hour to resuscitate him. He was pronounced dead from head injuries at 9.30am.

Roh campaigned as “Mr Clean” to become Korea’s most left-leaning president from 2003 to 2008, only to see his career end in disgrace. The self-taught human rights lawyer from a poor rural family was renowned for frankness – he even confessed to beating his wife – but was surprisingly thin-skinned and took criticism personally.

Last month he was questioned by prosecutors over allegations that he and his brother, wife and son had accepted £3.8m in bribes from a businessman, Park Yeon-cha. In South Korea suicide is culturally acceptable as a way to escape failure or disgrace.

Roh’s wife, who was heavily implicated in the scandal, collapsed on hearing the news yesterday. The justice ministry later announced that it was halting all investigations into his family.

His successor, President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative, was in “shock and disbelief”, a spokesman said.

Yesterday, as internet bulletin boards overflowed, supporters gathered in central Seoul to remember a sympathetic politician with a populist touch.

Roh had appeared to weather the rough-and-tumble of Korean politics, surviving a politically motivated impeachment in 2004 and a ferocious, sustained assault by a traditionally conservative press.

He talked, however, of his inadequacy for office and may have found the ceaseless pressure, even after leaving it, too much to take.

“People who are really corrupt can live with it, but Roh was a crusader who could not deal with the fact that he had done something wrong,” said Michael Breen, author of The Koreans. “Criminals live with their criminality – he was an honest man.”

From his rural home village, where he engaged in organic farming, Roh had watched his political legacy unravel as conservatives took over from his liberal-left administration and immediately took a harder line with North Korea.

Roh’s pro-North Korean stance left him at odds with the United States and it failed to stop North Korea from detonating a nuclear device in 2006. In recent months North Korea has torn up all its agreements with the South.

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