With their nation on high alert after threats from North Korea, grief-stricken South Koreans poured out onto the streets Friday to pay final respects to former leader Roh Moo-Hyun, who committed suicide last week, CNN reported.
The motorcade accompanying Roh's body was on its way to the South Korean capital Seoul on Friday morning, making a five-and-a-half-hour journey from his home in the village of Bongha.
People wept openly as Roh made his last journey in a flower-draped hearse. The funeral is to take place later Friday.
Roh, who served between 2003 and 2008, jumped from a hill behind his house last Saturday, government officials said. His death came amid an investigation into a bribery scandal that had tarnished his reputation.
However, tens of thousands of people have visited memorial shrines for Roh, laying white chrysanthemums in a traditional show of grief and leaving cigarettes on the altars to remember a man who was reported to have taken up smoking during the investigation.
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