By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter

President Roh Moo-hyun on Friday cited the need for a comprehensive national project to deal with past wrongdoings that have so far passed unnoticed.

The liberal head of state’s remark is widely understood as an instruction to the presidential fact-finding body for handling those who collaborated with Japan during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule and other wrongdoings committed under other iron-fisted rulers in the past.

``We should turn a new page in the nation’s history by getting to the bottom of dubious pasts that have long been left unquestioned,’’ Roh said while meeting with a group of the Presidential Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths Commission members whose term expired on June 30.

In a related development, Roh accused opposition parties of using criticism of the commission in an attempt to attack him, giving his approval to a recent ruling by the presidential fact-finding body in favor of pro-North Korean activities of the past.

``I think opposition forces have criticized the commission in order to pick a fight with me.’’ The presidential commission recently ruled that the unwarranted use of state power, namely torture, led to the deaths of three North Korean spies in the 1970s, and that their deaths contributed to the pro-democracy movement, inviting a backlash from the conservative opposition Grand National Party (GNP).

Roh’s stronger rhetoric came in sharp contrast to earlier reports that suggested he would express regret over the commission’s classifying of three former convicted North Korean spies as democratic figures, saying they were tortured to death in prison while resisting pressure to abandon their communist ideology.

The presidential body’s ruling angered many South Koreans who remain violently opposed to North Korea and its communist leadership.

``The commission operates independently of the president, although it is under the presidential office’s wing,’’ Roh told former commission members, adding he will respect the results of the commission’s two-year investigation into suspicious deaths under former authoritarian governments.

``I have no intention to speak negatively of the outcome of the commission’s activities,’’ the president added.

Amid the war of words concerning national identity, GNP spokesman Yim Tae-hee attacked Roh by saying, ``I ask the president if he is attempting to praise North Korean spies and protect anti-state forces charged with subversion.’’

GNP chairwoman Park Geun-hye previously threatened all-out war against the Roh administration, accusing the president of adopting pro-North Korea policies to destabilize the nation’s sense of identity.

Some of Roh’s ardent supporters demanded that Park, the eldest daughter of the late militant ruler Park Chung-hee, apologize for the poor human rights record under her father’s rule between 1961 and 1979.

Established in 2000 by former President Kim Dae-jung, who actively pushed detente with North Korea, the commission is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the deaths of dozens of people involved in pro-democracy movements against military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.

The ruling Uri Party is moving to allow the controversial presidential commission on suspicious deaths to continue its work by switching its affiliation from the president to the National Assembly, hoping to remove any doubts concerning the influence of the government on the commission’s ideologically sensitive work.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr