
South Korean president Park Geun-hye forced from office by constitutional court - mismatchpair
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/10/south-korea-president-park-geun-hye-constitutional-court-impeachment
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mismatchpair
Hi, I'm a native of Seoul and have attended most of the anti-Park government
candlelight rallies held every Saturday for the past 20 weeks in Seoul. A
total of over 15 million people have attended these nationwide protests during
this time with a single day record of 2.32 million people in attendance on
Dec. 3rd, 2016. All of these civil protests have been peaceful without any
incidents of violence, vandalism, looting, or even littering. Just ordinary
people wanting a corrupt government to be outed, the court system to do its
due diligence, and chaebols (Samsung, SK, Lotte, etc.) to be persecuted for
cronyism with the government. You get a real feeling of solidarity just being
among the people. Take a look at this exhilarating video -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fC9lhyzjDI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fC9lhyzjDI)
\- people doing a candlelight wave in one of the protests held in downtown
Seoul. I'll be online all day today, so feel free to ask me questions about
any of this or the current political situation in Korea.

------
Amygaz
A comment and two questions:

First of all, your story shows the high level of commitment a population has
to put to see a corrupted politician being punished, and also faith in the
judicial system.

Do you know if anything will be done or can be done to prevent that from
happening again?

My impression from loosely following this over the past 4 months or so is
that, I feel like what she is being accused of is only slightly worst than
what a great number of politicians in Washington DC are considering business
as usual. How crooked is the system on Korea compared with the US (or the UK I
guess, since you're linking the guardian)?

~~~
mismatchpair
Yes, you're right. There was a high level of commitment by the overwhelming
majority of the population (~80% of the population was in favor of impeachment
vs ~12% against), but the reason people kept showing up weekend after weekend
for the demonstrations was due to a lack of faith in all three branches of
government, i.e. it was to keep public pressure on the legislative, judicial,
and to a lesser extent the executive branches. The day the most people showed
up (2.32 million, Dec. 3rd, 2016) was the week before the parliament passed
the impeachment bill. People really wanted to express their determination and
anger as even some opposition party members were balking at the idea of
impeaching the president (we have 300 members of parliament, 200 votes were
needed for the bill to pass, and 234 voted in favor).

> Do you know if anything will be done or can be done to prevent that from
> happening again?

My understanding is that in a democratic system, there is always the risk of
putting someone like Park (or a more dramatic example is Hitler) in power. A
sign of a well-functioning democracy is whether appropriate social mechanisms
exist so that people can freely exercise the power to take back and undo what
they think is a mistake. I think history shows the only thing that works to
prevent these kinds of mistakes is an informed public, educating the masses,
and taking an active role (however small) in social and political matters.

> How crooked is the system on Korea compared with the US?

During the past 10 years in Korea (which was under a conservative government),
transparency indices dropped dramatically across the board, e.g. social,
financial, political, freedom of press. Transparency International
([http://www.transparency.org/](http://www.transparency.org/)) puts out a
report every year on government corruption, and in 2016 Korea placed 52nd out
of 176 countries (out of the 35 OECD countries Korea placed 29th). For
comparison, the US placed 18th and the UK 10th out of 176 countries (Denmark
and New Zealand tied for the top spot for being the least corrupt).

The charges ex-president Park faced in the impeachment trial (held in the
constitutional court) are different than what she will now be facing in a
criminal court. The constitutional court confirmed charges of extortion, abuse
of power, and leaking government secrets, which were the basis for upholding
the impeachment. Now, having been forced from power and no longer enjoying
immunity, the criminal court will decide whether she's criminally guilty of
these charges as well as bribery charges from Samsung, Hyundai, SK, Lotte,
etc. which carries a minimum of 10 years to a maximum sentence of life in
prison.

