Judge: Former President Park Removed from Office “to End Bad Political Customs”
For people who have followed South Korean politics for many years what former President Park was removed from office for is something that past Presidents have arguably done. How many shady corruption scandals have past ROK Presidents’ family and friends been involved in? For example Park’s shady friend is no where near as bad as former President Kim Dae-jung’s cash for summit scandal with North Korea. The ROK Constitutional Court says it has decided to end the bad political customs that have effected Korean politics with their ruling. I guess we will see if in the future every ROK President is now impeached for corruption scandals involving close friends or relatives:
“The president must exert her powers in respect to the Constitution and laws and her performance of her public duty must be transparently revealed for public evaluation,” Lee said. “But Park completely hid Choi’s intervention in state affairs. Whenever suspicions were raised, she denied and even criticized those raising the questions. Therefore, the checking and monitoring ability of constitutional institutions such as the National Assembly and media failed to function.”
(……..)The court also announced supplementary opinions regarding Park’s alleged nonfeasance during the Sewol ferry’s sinking, in which 304 passengers died on April 16, 2014 due to a weak government rescue operation. Although the judges agreed that her nonfeasance during the tragedy could not be used as grounds for dismissal, Judges Kim Yi-su and Lee Jin-sung said Park did fail her constitutional duty to faithfully serve as the president and a public servant. Judge Ahn Chang-ho also gave the opinion that the impeachment trial was not an ideological contest, but a matter of protecting the constitutional order, and dismissal was necessary to end bad political customs. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
Disgraceful and nonsensical ruling by the “judges”. The large part of South Korea have given up on the rule of law and republicanism.
The arrogant 8 will be judged by history for their despicable error.
Could you explain why the ruling is unjust? I’m not trying to be sarcastic or rude.
Here are some things that I don’t get.
(1) Choi has not been found guilty of anything and everyone interviewed by authorities have denied wrongdoing. So what is the evidence that Choi meddled in state affairs with explicit backing of the president? Given that even American presidents appoint cronies and right hand man, I imagine there has to be GROSS abuse of power for a president to be impeached.
(2) Why couldn’t the courts just issue a warrant or subpoena the president? Park physically blocked prosecutors from even entering the Blue House. No had the power to override this apparent executive overreach?
I can give some conjecture:
1. Korean sources seem to obsess over the mere existence of Choi Soon-sil at the heart of executive power and that does seem strange. That said, it does seem Choi used her connections in bad ways and Park kind of nudged things along in Choi’s favor. If this were in the US setting, it would conform with US rules. BTW, there is no need for criminal activity to impeach/remove someone in a US or Western context.
2. Heads of state have immunity from being bossed around by the legislature and judiciary. Interesting example; the Emperor of Japan likes to drive cars and goes out for a spin by himself occasionally. It’s been said if he were to violate Japanese traffic laws, nothing could be done as he is the Head of State. Fortunately for the residents of Tokyo, The Tenno follows traffic rules precisely despite his immunity!
I do get the feeling subpoenas in Korean law are extremely weak instruments even for those to whom they apply.
Park is not even half as corrupt as all her predecessors. She never personally profited from her dealings with Choi. She was removed from office because her political enemy in the Korean media, opposition parties, trade unions, and civic action groups, just didn’t like her policies on labour reforms, the agreement with Japan, and the hardline stance on North Korea. To remove her, the opposition forces pummelled her with their made up controversies like the “missing 7 hours” during the Sewol disaster, and now this tablet PC with Choi. It’s pretty telling when nobody in Korea ever talks about how they’re going to prevent the Sewol disaster from happening again. All their energy is spent on the “7 missing hours” of Park. This tells me that they don’t really care about this, other than using it for political attacks. They also kept up their attack on Park’s collusion with Samsung and other Chaebols. It’s well known that this is not unusual for Korea. The collusion and deep ties between government and business is the very entices of Korea Inc from the beginning of ROK. Park was torn to bits for being the typical Korean presidents before her. All of a sudden the public are told that this is bad and corrupt. Keep drilling in the negative news about her to the public, and pretty quickly the public buys into it all.
And PS: Notice Chung Yoo Ra (Choi Soon Sil’s daughter) is still not being deported by the Danish court. The Danish court had refused to extradite her on the condition that they didn’t have any evidence of wrong doing. The Korean side was to send the evidence to Denmark. Yet there is no word about this for the last two months now. This tells you what kinds of flimsy evidence are often used to justify the convictions in Korean courts. The judges are more swayed by public perceptions than the real evidence.
I assumed Park had immunity from a criminal investigation (which is probably why she refused to resign) but not the impeachment hearing. If she had immunity, then why is her refusal to cooperate with the investigation grounds for impeachment?
I think Park’s errors possibly merited censure (or an equivalent in Korea) but not impeachment, especially since her level of relationship with the conglomerates is apparently fairly common for a ROK president.
I’m no expert on impeachment, but I always believed in the US that’s reserved for conduct bordering on treason or gross abuse of power. Otherwise “President Hillary” might have been impeached by Republicans on the Clinton Foundation scandal. Even some its lawyers saw potential conflicts of interest and ethical issues. But nothing was proven.
There has to be clear case of collusion and “pay for play” scheme for Park to be impeached. Facilitating a confidante’s business interests is questionable but not necessarily criminal. Unless I’ve missed new details concerning the case.
Impeachments (at least in America) are as much about politics as they are criminal matters, especially at the presidential level. We’ve had two presidential impeachments and one near impeachment. The first (Johnson) involved Congress getting mad over the president firing his Secretary of War. The charges in Clinton’s impeachment were mostly of a criminal nature but included at least one non-criminal claim. Nixon didn’t get impeached but the articles which had been drafted when he resigned were over half of a non-criminal nature.