South Korea will learn the fate of the Park Geun-hye presidency within the next week, when the Constitutional Court is widely expected to announce its ruling on her impeachment trial.

The top court’s eight justices are currently deliberating on the 13 charges leveled against Park by the parliament which voted on Dec. 9 to sack the conservative state chief over a scandal involving her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil.

The judges will decide if the president breached the country’s Constitution and laws and if the alleged violations are serious enough to warrant her removal. To gauge the seriousness of her misconduct, they will use two yardsticks -- whether she should be ousted for the sake of protecting the Constitution and whether the president has lost too much public trust to maintain her presidency.

The Korea Herald takes a look at Park’s key charges and each party’s (Park and the parliament) arguments in the impeachment trial.
 

The main charges

In her closing argument read by her legal representative, Park pleaded not guilty, saying she acted purely in the national interest and claiming no knowledge of any illegal activities conducted by her acquaintances, including Choi Soon-sil.

The parliament’s representatives, however, insist that she extensively broke the Constitution and the laws, and that a permanent dismissal is unavoidable, as her betrayal of public trust and abuse of authority are simply too serious.

- Bribery

One of the key charges against Park is that she played a major role in extorting donations worth 77 billion won ($66.8 million) from local firms for the K-Sports and Mir foundations her friend Choi allegedly controlled.

Park insists that she helped establish the two foundations only to promote culture and sports and she never coerced companies to make donations.

“I have never received any bribes or gave any illicit favors to businessmen, including Samsung Group’s Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong,” she said in the closing argument.

“If I knew anything about irregularities involving my acquaintances including Choi Soon-sil, I would have sternly punished them before anybody else.”

The parliament, however, claims that Park was deeply involved in running the foundations and extorting donations and helped Choi pursue personal benefits using paper companies.

“President Park, along with Choi, made decisions on the amounts of corporate donations, personnel appointments at the foundations and other organizational matters and gave orders to An Chong-bum (a former aide to Park) as she was told by Choi,” the parliament’s lawyer Hwang Jeong-geun said.

- Violation of the rule of law and popular sovereignty

The parliament accuses the president undermining popular sovereignty and representative democracy by letting her associates influence key decisions in running the country.

President Park claims that she had overly trusted Choi Soon-sil, who she said had been by her side for 40 years and helped her with private matters like buying clothes and goods.

“I should have not lowered my guard against Choi Soon-sil,” she said.

“But it is not at all true that I give confidential documents about state policies, personnel appointments and diplomacy to Choi Soon-sil and let her meddle in state affairs,” she said, adding it is “unthinkable” to consult with her in running the state.

But the parliament argues that ex-presidential secretary Jeong Ho-seong leaked confidential documents to Choi under Park’s order, giving as evidence 171 documents Jeong emailed to Choi between March 2013 and December 2014.

Leaking the documents was not one-off or accidental, it was “systematic and intentional,” the parliament claims.

“It is beyond simply seeking the opinion of a close friend. She used her authority, endowed by the public through an election, through unofficial channel and abetted Choi’s manipulation of power,” the parliament’s lawyer said.

- Abuse of presidential authority

“I am in charge of appointing officials at government posts. I never named anyone at the recommendation of Choi,” Park said, denying the claims that she arbitrarily ordered the dismissal of officials at the Culture Ministry who did not give favors to Choi’s family.

But the Hwang argued that the dismissals, of working-level officials, were made without proper justification, and that the only apparent reason was their interference in “Choi’s illicit profit-making activities.”

He added that Park also forcibly ordered the resignation of Culture Minister Yoo Jin-ryong for refusing to cooperate in creating a blacklist of liberal artists.

“President Park condoned Choi’s meddling in personnel appointments and let her place people under her influence at key posts in the culture and sports sectors to help her pursue personal gain,” Hwang said, citing TV commercial director Cha Eun-taek, ex-Culture Minister Kim Jong-deok and ex-Vice Culture Kim Chong, all allegedly recommended by Choi.

- Violation of duty to protect people’s lives

President Park argues that she had been continuously briefed about the situation at the time of the deadly sinking of the Sewol ferry on April, 16, 2014, the nation’s biggest maritime disaster that claimed more than 300 lives.

“I ordered the chief of national security and the chief of maritime police to do their best to save the passengers and prevent further casualties multiple times,” Park said. “It is not true at all that I received plastic surgery or medical treatment at the presidential residence.

“But I waited for a report on the rescue operation because I thought excessive intervention in the field situation by a president, who is not a disaster or rescue expert, would not help the operation at all.”

The parliament argues that this amounts to Park offloading her presidential responsibility to save people’s lives onto the maritime police and other relevant ministries.

“President Park thought that it was the maritime police’s job to save the people in danger, not the president’s,” the parliament’s representative said. “We still don’t know what Park did on the day of the sinking of the ferry. What we know is that she did not do what she had to do.

“It was 8:52 a.m. when authorities first learned about the Sewol accident. The presidential secretariat knew it from media reports at 9:19 a.m. and the presidential national security secretary shared the news at 9:24 a.m.

“The last person escaped from the ferry at 10:19 a.m., which means more passengers could have been saved before the ferry capsized if there were proper rescue operations during the 87 minutes.”

The Constitutional Court has expressed dissatisfaction with Park’s account of events, saying she has failed to give details on what she was doing as she was being briefed, as well as when and how she first learned about the accident.

- Violation of press freedom

One of the charges is Park’s alleged crackdown on the press. She is accused of exerting undue influence to sack a president of a local daily which has reported on a document revealing Choi’s husband Jeong Yoon-hoe’s covert meddling in state affairs in 2014.

“I only asked for a thorough investigation into how the presidential office’s secret documents were leaked. I did not restrict the Segye Daily’s reporting or intend to violate the press freedom,” Park said. “I have neither ordered my secretaries to demand the Segye Daily dismiss its president Cho Jan-kyu nor condoned it.”

Jeong was one of Park’s longest-serving confidants who assisted Park when she entered politics in 1998 and was her chief secretary in 2002 when Park founded her own political party.

“Since the Segye Daily reported on Jeong’s interference in state affairs, the presidential secretary’s office discussed a plan to attack the paper by mobilizing the prosecution and tax audit agency,” the parliament said, adding such action to clamp down on the paper was under her orders.

Lingering dispute over impeachment process

Aside from the charges, another contentious issue is the legitimacy of the impeachment trial itself.

Park’s lawyers, after its efforts to delay the trial process were thwarted by justices, took issue with the political neutrality of the Constitutional Court itself in the last few hearings.

Amid a sharp divide among the public over Park’s impeachment, complaints about the fairness of the trial and legality of the impeachment process, critics say, could lead Park and her supporters not to accept the court’s verdict, should it be not in their favor.

Park’s lawyers argued that it is unfair for her to be judged by the current eight justices, not nine. The court now has eight justices following the retirement of ex-Chief Justice Park Han-chul.

“(The possibility of) additional vacancy of justices during the trial played a role in rushing the proceedings, which restricted President Park’s defense rights,” Park’s lawyer Lee Dong-heup said, with another lawyer going as far as to call for a retrial.

But the parliament points out that the Constitutional Court Act stipulates that trial can proceed and a verdict can be made with the attendance of a minimum of seven justices.

Park’s defense team also claim that the passage of the impeachment was based on fabricated evidence and biased media reports.

“Evidence submitted to the court were illegally collected and fabricated. We have never seen the tablet PC in reality. We cannot agree to the court which accepted it as legitimate,” said Park’s lawyer Lee Joong-hwan, citing a tablet, supposedly owned by Choi Soon-sil and obtained by the prosecution, and An Chong-bum’s notebooks.

A local cable TV’s reports on the tablet PC, which include presidential speeches and policy drafts Choi edited and Park’s private photos, triggered the scandal in late October. An’s handwritten notes detail Park’s instructions to An to collect specific amounts of donations from local conglomerates for the Mir and K-Sports foundations alleged to be under Choi’s control.

“The parliament has passed the impeachment based on media reports as well as an indictment, in which President Park was named as a suspect, for Choi Soon-sil, An Chong-bum and Jeong Ho-seong and investigation result by the prosecution,” the parliament said.

By Ock Hyun-ju (laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)