Dark Park and Moon-Light

Dark Park and Moon-Light

 

By Dr. Sungsoo (Steven) Kim, Policy Advisor of Transparency International-Korea

 

From the end of last year, millions of Koreans joined demonstrations, week after week, for several months, to protest about the corruption of then president Park Geun-hye (1952- ). The protests finally ended in a Constitutional Court's decision to remove the president from office for the first time in the nation’s history.  

Park was the Korea’s first female president and the daughter of military dictator Park Chung-hee (1917-1979) who was gunned down by his right-hand man, the director of Korea CIA, after a prolonged 18 years military rule.

Park Geun-hae had been an icon of the conservative establishment in Korea’s political, economic, social and cultural sectors. She introduced press censorship, persecuted critical journalists and even made blacklists and oppressed satirical artists. 

Park served as President of Korea from 25 February 2013 to 10 March 2017 until she was impeached with corruption charges. Prior to her presidency, Park was a leader of a conservative party and a member of Parliament from 1998 until 2012.

In the wake of the April 2014 capsize of a ferry, public outcry arose over Park's handling of the disaster. In response, Park established a commission to monitor and prosecute media critics of her leadership. As a result, not only Korean journalists but also even a Japanese journalist, were indicted on charges of defamation for reporting the negative or suspicious sides of her leadership.

In addition, Park has been continually criticized for holding press conferences with only Q&As submitted in advance. As of 11 January 2015, she held press conferences only four times since she took office in February 2013. Among the four press conferences, three of them were one-way speeches without Q&As, thus the public labeled her as a "non-communicator".

On 15 November 2015, around 80,000 anti-government protesters clashed with police forces on the streets, demanding that Park step down. The rally was triggered by Park's adopting business-friendly policies while suppressing laborers’ basic rights and forcing schools to use only state-issued history textbooks which praised her late father’s military dictatorship and pro-Japanese collaboration activities.

In late October 2016, an investigation into Park's relationship with her unofficial top aide, Choi Soon-sil (1956- ) was launched. Several news outlets reported that Choi, who has no official government position, had access to confidential information from Park, and acted as a close confidant to Park. Ultimately Choi and Park's senior staff used their influence to extort around $75M from chaebols (conglomerates), especially Samsung and SK to set up culture and sports-related foundations.

Choi is also accused of having influenced a prestigious university to change their admission criteria in order that her daughter to be granted a place and given ‘A’ grades without even taking examinations and attending classes there.

Due to overwhelming weekly demonstrations, on 9 December 2016, Park was impeached by the Parliament on corruption charges.

Subsequently, on 10 March 2017, the impeachment was upheld by the Constitutional Court via a unanimous ruling to remove Park from office.

On 17 April 2017, Park was officially charged with abuse of power, bribery, coercion, and leaking government secrets.

Currently Park is imprisoned together with her former aides, including Choi. 

In the presidential election on 9 May 2017, 41 percent of Koreans supported the former human rights lawyer, Moon Jae-in (1953- ) as new president against his conservative rival’s 24 percent. Moon promised to make Korea a fair and transparent country. He pledged that he would make efforts to reform and eradicate corrupt ties between politics and business, and resolve regional and social disparities.

The election was a great turning point for most Koreans. As Moon’s landslide victory is likely to terminate decades of corrupt conservative rule, it might also conclude the most bizarre political corruption scandal in the nation’s history. Now, the majority of Koreans are waiting to see if Moon can meet the expectations of the supporters who demonstrated to throw his corrupt predecessor out of office.