South Korean ex-president jailed in corruption case
Prosecutors have 20 days to charge impeached leader.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — South Korea’s disgraced former President Park Geun-hye was arrested and jailed Friday over high-profile corruption allegations that already ended her tumultuous fouryear rule and prompted an election to find her successor.
A convoy of vehicles, including a black sedan carrying Park, entered a detention facility near Seoul after the Seoul Central District Court granted prosecutors’ request to arrest her.
Many Park supporters waved national flags and shouted “president” as Park’s car entered the facility.
Prosecutors can detain her for up to 20 days before formally charging her, meaning she will likely be in jail while her case is heard. A district court normally issues a ruling within six months of an indictment.
The Seoul court’s decision is yet another humiliation for Park. South Korea’s first female president was elected in 2012 amid overwhelming support from conservatives who revere her dictator father as a hero for lifting the country from poverty in the 1960s and 1970s, though he also accumulated a record of severe human rights abuses.
Prosecutors accuse Park of colluding with a confidante to extort big businesses, take a bribe from one of the companies and commit other wrongdoing.
The allegations led millions of South Koreans to protest in the streets every weekend for months before lawmakers impeached her in December and the Constitutional Court ruled in March to formally remove her from office.
It made Park the country’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office since democracy arrived here in the late 1980s. South Korea will hold an election in May to choose Park’s successor. Opinion surveys say liberal opposition leader Moon Jae-in, who lost the 2012 election to Park, is the favorite.
Prosecutors could have charged Park without arresting her. But they said they wanted to detain her because the allegations against her are “grave” and because other suspects involved in the scandal, including her confidante Choi Soo-si and Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, have already been arrested.
The Seoul court said it decided to approve Park’s arrest because it believes key allegations against her were confirmed and there were worries that she might try to destroy evidence.
A day earlier, Park was questioned at a court hearing for nearly nine hours. As she left for the hearing, hundreds of her supporters, many of them elderly citizens, gathered at her private Seoul home.
They wept, chanted slogans and tried to block Park’s car before being pushed back by police.
In the coming weeks, prosecutors are expected to formally charge Park with extortion, bribery and abuse of power. Her bribery conviction alone is punishable by the minimum 10 years in prison and the maximum life imprisonment in South Korea.
Park and Choi deny most of the allegations. Park has said she only let Choi edit some of her presidential speeches and got her help on “public relations” issues. Choi made similar statements.