(LEAD) Roh jumped to his death in absence of security guard: police

(ATTN: UPDATES with other details and Cheong Wa Dae's position in last seven paras)
GIMHAE, South Korea, May 27 (Yonhap) -- The death of former President Roh
Moo-hyun will be entirely reinvestigated, as the sole security guard who
accompanied him on his last hike was found to have lied about the details
surrounding his death, police said Wednesday.

A regional police chief in charge of the probe told reporters it has been
confirmed that Roh jumped to his death from a mountainside cliff near his rural
home on Saturday morning in the absence of the security guard.
The body guard, identified only by his family name Lee, had initially claimed
that he personally witnessed Roh plunging from the 30-meter-high "Owl Rock," just
behind the late Roh's residence in Bongha Village, Gimhae, about 450 kilometers
southeast of Seoul.
As contradictory evidence and eyewitness accounts emerged, however, the security
guard changed his statement, saying he was not with the former president at the
moment he leapt from the rock.
"It is believed that former President Roh fell from Owl Rock after sending his
security guard on an errand to a nearby temple," Lee Woon-wu, commissioner of the
Gyeongnam Provincial Police Agency, said.
According to the police commissioner, Roh arrived at Owl Rock at 6:14 a.m. with
security guard Lee and asked him for a cigarette. Three minutes later, Roh
instructed his guard to go to Jongtowon Temple, a small Buddhist temple about 200
meters further up the mountain, to see if the head monk was present, the
commissioner said.
A mortuary tablet in honor of the former president's deceased parents is
enshrined at the temple.
"Roh may have plunged from Owl Rock while alone. The security guard belatedly
looked for the missing former president and spotted him at 6:45 a.m. The guard
then carried Roh on his back to a car at the residence before rushing him to a
nearby hospital," said the commissioner.
Investigators at the Gyeongnam police agency said they have been confused by the
security guard's conflicting accounts about the circumstances leading to Roh's
apparent suicide.
At one point, the security guard had said he was turning away an approaching
citizen at the moment the former president fell from the cliff, investigators
said, speculating that the guard may have lied for fear of being punished for
dereliction of duty.
In his initial statement made right after Roh's death last Saturday, security
guard Lee said he and the former president arrived at Owl Rock at 6:20 a.m. and
stayed there for about 20 minutes before Roh suddenly jumped off the rock.
Lee insisted at that time that he was looking in the other direction at the
moment when Roh suddenly threw himself from the rock. But he covered up his trip
to Jongtowon temple during the initial police probe.
Amid the mounting suspicion surrounding the police probe into Roh's death, some
netizens are also raising questions over why the former president chose to write
his will on the computer, instead of on paper.
In the brief suicide note stored in his notebook computer, the late Roh asked
that his body be cremated and a stone monument be set up in memory of him in
Bongha Village.
Meanwhile, a ranking aide for President Lee Myung-bak said that the presidential
office Cheong Wa Dae has instructed the Gyeongnam police agency to not miss any
detail in its ongoing probe into Roh's death.
"Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday ordered the Gyeongnam police agency to get to the
bottom of Roh's death and quell all public suspicion over his death," said the
official.
"Security guard Lee may have attempted to cover up his possible neglect of duty
by distorting the circumstances surrounding Roh's death. He could possibly face
disciplinary punishment, if necessary," the official said.
ycm@yna.co.kr
(END)