hankyoreh

This cartoon depicts the main suspects in the government interference scandal

On Mar. 27, Prosecutors requested an arrest warrant against former president Park Geun-hye on charges including accepting bribes. This is the third arrest warrant that has been requested against a former president in South Korea. It’s regrettable to see the recurrence of this unhappy political history. But given the shameless behavior that has come to light in the influence-peddling scandal and given Park’s disrespectful and arrogant attitude, this is the obvious legal decision. It shows that justice is served in the end, and that you reap what you sow.

In the history of South Korea’s Constitutional government, there is nothing especially unusual about a president coming to a sorry end, but there are few cases as baffling and bizarre as Park’s. Even the facts that have been revealed through the investigation thus far show that Park may have acted as if she regarded integrity and principle as more precious than life itself, but that this was all a blatant lie. In private, Park blatantly showed herself to be a criminal indulging in the vilest form of collusion between the government and big business, using her position to extract money from chaebols and sharing the loot with her close associates. Even though investigative reporting and three investigations, including one by a Special Prosecutor, have brought Park‘s crimes and hypocrisy before the eyes of the entire country again and again, Park foolishly thought she could trick them all.

The critical accusers and witnesses in the charges cited by the Prosecutors’ Special Investigation Headquarters in its request for an arrest warrant are the very advisors on which Park so closely relied. The notebook in which all of Park’s remarks were taken down as carefully as if they were imperial edicts and the audio files that were recorded to ensure that not a single word would be lost have come back to haunt her, serving as the decisive physical evidence snaring her. Considering that it was Park who urged her associates to hold on to the physical evidence of her influence peddling, who else is there left to blame?　

The arrest warrant is karma at work

“This is a very serious matter,” Prosecutors said on Mar. 27. “Park not only leaked important state secrets, but she also committed actions that constituted an abuse of power: she used her position and power as president to receive bribes from corporations and to infringe upon corporations’ freedom of management.” It seems clear that most of the evidence is already in the Prosecutors’ hands for all 13 of the charges against Park, including five new charges confirmed by the investigative team of Special Prosecutor Park Young-soo. Worst of all, the fact that Park attempted to save herself by shifting the blame to her aides and confidantes who are already in jail is nothing if not immoral, both for Park as a person, as well as in her role as president.

Some people are defending Park by saying that “she did not pursue her personal interest” or that “she only got a single item of clothing” (Hong Joon-pyo). But Prosecutors regarded Park and Choi Sun-sil as having shared their financial interests. Indeed, there are reportedly several pieces of evidence showing that they engaged in economic activity together, with Choi paying for Park’s house in Seoul’s Gangnam district. If Park didn’t have a financial motivation, it‘s hard to understand why she found advertising work for Choi’s company or micromanaged personnel decisions at corporations and banks. Allegations about the real owner of the hundreds of billions of won owned by Choi and her family, both in South Korea and overseas, will have to be fully investigated in the future.

Prosecutors said that “since Park denies the majority of the criminal charges, there are continuing concerns that she will destroy evidence.” As this suggests, Park has not shown contrition and remorse but persisted in obfuscation, fabrication and deflection since the very beginning of the scandal. She claimed that charges backed up by material evidence were “concocted,” and she rejected a search warrant issued by a court on absurd grounds. After being ousted from the presidency and stripped of her privileges, she had no choice but to answer a summons from Prosecutors, but she has still not offered a frank apology. That’s why an overwhelming percentage of South Koreans - more than 70% - think that Park ought to be put in jail. While some argue she should be treated leniently given her status as a former president and not detained during her trial, there don’t seem to be any extenuating circumstances to consider.　

Denial of the charges aside, it was wicked of Park to try to stir up the public through her political scheming. While Park was running the Blue House, the Office of the Senior Secretary for Political Affairs collected money from the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) and handed it to radical right-wing forces cloaked as civic groups, which it mobilized as shock troops. Prosecutors must also thoroughly investigate such actions and strictly prosecute them. The forces who treat Park like royalty while threatening democratic processes with physical violence are neither conservatives nor civic groups. It’s absurd to talk about unity, reconciliation or tolerance without addressing these forces. South Korea’s conservative parties must take Park’s prosecution as an opportunity to make a break from these radical elements. They must shed their reactionary skin and emerge as healthy conservatives.

It‘s highly symbolic that Park was brought to the brink of judicial punishment the day after the Sewol ferry was brought to the surface, considering that it was Park who did nothing to save passengers’ lives. The Constitutional Court made clear in its supplementary opinion to its decision on Park’s impeachment that, if Park had gone to her office at 10 am on the morning of the accident and done her job, those lives could have been saved. Since the leader who squandered those seven critical hours then stayed up for seven hours in the middle of the night carefully reading the investigators’ report in an attempt to save her own life, how could the South Korean public and the families of the Sewol ferry victims not be enraged?

Now that Park has been impeached and removed from office, it’s necessary that she be strictly and legally prosecuted in order to undo the evils she has left behind her and to bring a close to the era of her and her father, Park Chung-hee. This will also show that democracy and the rule of law are alive and well in South Korea.

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