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Former President Park Geun-hye is taken by car from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul’s Seocho district to Seoul Detention Center

An arrest warrant for former president Park Geun-hye requested by the Prosecutors’ Special Investigation Headquarters (led by Lee Yeong-ryeol) was issued by a court on Mar. 31. The warrant, which was issued 21 days after the Constitutional Court removed Park from the presidency, is linked to a number of charges against Park, including the acceptance of a 43.3 billion won (US$38.6 million) bribe from Samsung.

Park is the third former president who has been jailed, along with Roh Tae-woo (in office 1988-93) and Chun Doo-hwan (1979-88). While Prosecutors can detain Park for up to 20 days as they carry out their investigation, concerns about the possible influence this could have on the May 9 presidential election will likely lead them to wrap up their investigation and hand the case to the courts before Apr. 17, when the election period officially kicks off.

After questioning Park during the Mar. 30 hearing for the arrest warrant requested by the prosecutors, Kang Bu-yeong, the judge in charge of warrants for the Seoul Central District Court, issued the warrant at 3:03 am on Mar. 31. “Since the main charges have been established and there are concerns about the destruction of evidence, we grant the grounds for detention, its necessity and its significance,” Kang said.

The court appears to have issued the arrest warrant for Park after concluding that the charge of bribery, which is the linchpin of the investigation, has been partially substantiated. During Park’s pre-arrest questioning on Mar. 30, Prosecutors and Park’s attorneys also spent the most time addressing the charges of accepting a bribe. While Park is facing 13 charges, the arguments during the warrant hearing focused on the most severe of them.

Prosecutors managed to back up their charge that Park received 43.3 billion won from Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong in return for helping him inherit management rights over the Samsung Group by providing evidence including the notebook of former Blue House Senior Secretary for Economic Affairs Ahn Jong-beom (who is in jail awaiting trial) and various text messages exchanged by staff at Samsung who were discussing financial support for Choi Sun-sil’s daughter Jung Yu-ra, analysts say.

The court’s decision was particularly influenced by the fact that Lee, who is accused of having given the bribe, is in jail. Observing that the people who gave the bribe and Park’s accomplices, including Choi Sun-sil, were already in jail, Prosecutors stated that fairness required that Park should be detained during their investigation.

Park’s attorneys reportedly countered these claims by arguing that Park did not receive any kind of request from Samsung and that the money that Samsung paid went to the Mir and K-Sports Foundations and to Choi and her daughter Jung, while Park herself did not profit from this in any way. During the warrant hearing, Park is said to have strongly denied the charges against her and to have admitted that she feels she has been wronged.

But the court concluded that Park’s arguments were not persuasive, since the Samsung Group would have had no reason to provide so much assistance to Choi and Jung, who were only private citizens, if they had not received some kind of promise from the president about helping Lee inherit control of the group.

With Park’s arrest marking the apex of the Prosecutors’ investigation, the next question is the direction of its investigation in the future. In order to minimize the political effect on the presidential election, Prosecutors are reportedly very likely to file charges against Park before Apr. 17, which marks the beginning of the official election period. Prosecutors are also likely to speed up their investigation not only of Samsung but of other chaebols, including Lotte and SK, who have come up in the investigation, so that they can make a decision about whether to also charge those companies with giving bribes around the time they file charges against Park. Along with this, they’re also moving forward with their investigation of former Blue House Senior Secretary for Civil Affairs Woo Byung-woo with the aim of not dragging out the investigation.

By Seo Young-ji and Choi Hyun-june, staff reporters

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