SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 20-year prison sentence for former President Park Geun-hye for bribery and other crimes, ending a historic corruption case which marked a striking fall from grace for the country’s first female leader and conservative icon.
The ruling means that Park, who was fired and arrested in 2017, could serve 22 years behind bars, following a separate conviction for illegally interfering in his party’s candidate candidacies ahead of the 2016 parliamentary elections.
But ending her term in prison also makes her eligible for a special presidential pardon, an imminent possibility as the country’s deeply divided electorate approaches the next March 2022 presidential election.
President Moon Jae-in, a Liberal who won the by-elections after Park’s removal, has not yet directly addressed the possibility of releasing his predecessor. Moon has recently seen its approval ratings drop to new lows due to economic problems, political scandals and growing coronavirus infections.
Many conservative politicians have called for Moon to release Park and another convicted former president, Lee Myung-bak, who is serving a 17-year term on his own corruption charges. At least one prominent member of Moon’s Democratic Party, Lee Nak-yon, supported the idea of pardoning former presidents as a gesture of “national unity.”
Park, 68, described himself as a victim of political revenge. She refused to participate in her October 2017 trials and did not participate in Thursday’s ruling. Her lawyer did not return the calls for comment.
The collapse of Park and Lee Myung-bak has prolonged a series of poorly concluded South Korean presidents, fueling criticism that the country puts too much power that is easily abused and often remains out of control in the hands of elected leaders.
Almost every former president, or family members and their assistants, were scattered in scandals at the end of their term or after they left office.
One president, Park dictator Park Chung-hee’s father, was assassinated by his spy chief in 1979. Another former president, Roh Moo-hyun, Moon’s longtime friend and political mentor, jumped to death in 2009. , amid allegations that his family members took bribes from a businessman during his presidency.
Moon spokesman Kang Min-seok said the Park Geun-hye ruling marked the “maturation and growth” of South Korea’s democracy, but added that the imprisonment of a former president for crimes is an “unfortunate” history that does not should be repeated. Presidential officials avoided specific answers when asked about the possibility of Moon pardoning Park and Lee.
Shin Young-dae, a Democratic Party spokesman, called on Park to apologize for the “unchangeable shame” it has left on the country’s history.
Park was convicted of collaborating with her longtime confidante, Choi Soon-sil, to take millions of dollars in bribes and extortion money from some of the country’s largest business groups, including Samsung, in time. which was in office from 2013 to 2016.
She was also charged with illegally accepting monthly funds from her spy bosses who were diverted from the agency’s budget.
After millions of weeks of protests, Park was indicted by lawmakers in December 2016 and officially removed from office in March 2017 after the Constitutional Court upheld the indictment.
It was not immediately clear how Thursday’s ruling would affect the legal saga of Samsung billionaire scion Lee Jae-yong. The 52-year-old Samsung Electronics vice president is facing a ruling in the Seoul High Court next week following a new trial over allegations that he bribed Park and Choi to win government support for a 2015 merger between the two. Samsung affiliates that helped them strengthen control. over the largest business group in the country.
Prosecutors are seeking a nine-year prison sentence for Lee, who has been charged separately with charges of stock price manipulation, breach of trust and breach of the merger audit. Lee’s lawyers described him as a victim of the abuse of presidential power and described the 2015 deal as part of “normal business activity.”
Choi is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence.
Park initially faced a prison sentence of more than 30 years before the Supreme Court sent his cases back to a lower court in 2019.
In 2018, the Seoul High Court sentenced her to 25 years in prison after examining her along with bribery, extortion, abuse of power and other convictions.
But in October 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the Seoul High Court to deal with Park’s bribery charge separately from other charges, based on a law that requires this for cases involving a president or other elected officials, even when the alleged crimes are committed together.
In July 2019, the High Court handed Park a five-year warrant on allegations of espionage, but the Supreme Court also ordered a retrial in November, instructing the lower court to more generally charge a charge of loss of funds Of the state .
Prosecutors appealed after Seoul’s High Court handed Park a 20-year term in July last year after the two cases merged.
If Park serves his full sentence, he will be released in 2039 at the age of 87.