Opposition parties to collect signatures for Park’s impeachment motion

The impeachment of South Korea’s embattled President Park Guen-Hye in a snowballing corruption case has inched closer as opposition parties chose to make a push for it.

The protests against South Korean President Park Geun-hye continued last Saturday with another mass demonstration in Seoul.

South Korea’s Constitution gives the president immunity from arrest or indictment except for certain crimes against the state like treason.

The president is now refusing to cooperate with her own Ministry of Justice investigation, after saying earlier she would allow the prosecutors to question her.

The push for Park’s ouster was driven by an interim report Sunday by prosecutors who indicted three people – including longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil – on charges including extortion and leaking state secrets.

She held a previously arranged summit with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on November 10 but has not had a public event outside the Blue House since November 8, when she visited parliament offering to relinquish some of her powers in office to placate lawmakers. Prosecutors will continue to investigate Park, Lee said.

On Tuesday an opposition party lawmaker revealed that Ms Park’s office a year ago bought hundreds of pills which can treat erectile dysfunction, including Viagra and the generic version of the drug.

Park also missed the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, extending her absence since October 11 when she last led the meeting she normally chairs every two weeks.

The prosecutors’ announcement provides Park’s liberal rivals and dissidents in her own conservative ruling party with a real legal path to parliamentary impeachment.

She nominated Kim Byong-joon, a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University, as his replacement, but the National Assembly has not yet cleared Kim to take the role.

Jung said that the president plans to prove her innocence by “actively cooperating” with an independent investigation pushed by a special prosecutor.

South Korean law stipulates that the Constitutional Court should make the final decision within 180 days after it receives an impeachment proposal from the National Assembly.

Park is so far being treated as an accomplice but could yet become a prime suspect.

But an impeachment motion must be confirmed by six of the court’s nine judges.

HU: Part of the problem – impeachment proceedings might take the same amount of time as she has left in office. No matter how the move turns out, however, the current political tumult will not subside unless she tells the entire truth to the public.

Or the court could overturn the impeachment.

Since South Korea’s first free and fair election in 1987, every president has faced graft investigations after leaving office and one – Roh Moo-hyun – committed suicide as a corruption probe closed in on his family. He was impeached on allegations of incompetence and illegal electioneering.

Further, following this logic, other ministers in the Cabinet who were appointed by Park, should also be kicked out before the president’s duties are suspended with a passage of the impeachment bill.

Ironically, South Korean voters chose Park mainly because they thought she would be incorruptible.

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