The country's rival parties were locked in a heated debate over how to treat a former president Tuesday, one day after the prosecution asked the local court to issue a warrant for the arrest of Park Geun-hye.
The debate began after Rep. Kim Jin-tae, a presidential hopeful and pro-Park loyalist of the former ruling Liberty Korea Party, called the former president a lady ousted from her royal palace, apparently labeling Park a person of nobility.
(Yonhap)
"I simply feel miserable," he told a press conference Monday, only hours after the prosecution said they have filed a request for Park's arrest over a series of massive corruption allegations that also led to her removal from office on March 10.
An arrest, Kim insisted, "will be the same as forcing a lady, sobbing at her home after being forced out of the royal palace, to drink poison."
Kim's remarks were apparently aimed at calling for the treatment of a former president with more courtesy and respect.
However, his remarks apparently irritated many who said all must be equal before the law, and that the former president does not deserve special treatment.
"Instead of protocol for a former president, she deserves to be made an example of," Rep. Park Kyung-mee, a spokeswoman of the liberal Democratic Party, told a press conference.
"Should Park evade (being arrested) through holes in the legal system, the country will no longer be able to be called a nation governed by law," she added.
Kim quickly fought back, this time demanding the resignation of Prosecutor-General Kim Soo-nam, who reportedly made or at least endorsed the decision to seek the former president's arrest.
"It is not courteous for him to keep his position even by arresting the very president who appointed him to the office," he said.
Still, Kim's view is gathering little support even from his own party and its lawmakers who apparently refuse to view or treat the former president as royalty.
"We understand the prosecution made its decision based on the law and principle," party spokesman Rep. Kim Sung-won said Monday.
The court is set to hold a hearing on Park's arrest on Thursday.
If arrested, Park will be the third South Korean president in the country's history to be detained. (Yonhap)