SUPPORTERS OF IMPEACHED PRESIDENT PARK GEUN-HYE RIOT AFTER A SOUTH KOREAN COURT RULING REMOVED HER FROM OFFICE OVER A CORRUPTION SCANDAL THAT HAS PLUNGED THE COUNTRY INTO POLITICAL TURMOIL.
COURT RULING PUSHES OUT LEADER
This was not supposed to happen in South Korea. It was too divided, too corrupt, too much in thrall to the rich and powerful who’d always had their way. Four months ago, the idea that the country’s leader, along with the cream of South Korean business and politics, would be knocked from command after sustained, massive, peaceful protests would have been ludicrous.
Now Park Geun-hye, thanks to a court ruling Friday, is no longer president and may very well face criminal extortion and other charges. The head of the country’s biggest company, Samsung, sits in jail, when he’s not in a courtroom facing trial for bribery and embezzlement linked to the corruption scandal that felled Park. And a Who’s Who of once untouchables languishes behind bars waiting for their day in court.
The ruling capped a stunning fall for the country’s first female leader, who rode a wave of lingering conservative nostalgia for her late dictator father to victory in 2012, only to see her presidency crumble as millions of furious protesters filled the nation’s streets.
The swift upending of the status quo has so shaken the country’s foundations that it has left people stunned. It also deepens South Korea’s political and security uncertainty as the country faces existential threats from North Korea, reported economic retaliation from a China furious about Seoul’s co-operation with the U.S. on an anti-missile system, and questions in Seoul about the new Trump administration’s commitment to the countries’ security alliance.
South Koreans will look to take their peaceful revolution — and the genuine sense of empowerment that many of the average citizens who took to the streets in protest, week after week, now feel at their accomplishment — and turn it into lasting progress.
Among the first of the many big, uneasy questions that linger over this enterprise: What happens next?
In the short term, at least, the answer is more politics, and of the lightning-quick variety. Half a dozen or so candidates will now scramble, over the next two months, for a shot at becoming the next president of South Korea. Elections will likely come May 9.
The current smart money is on a liberal — Moon Jae-in, who lost to Park in 2012 and who now leads in early polls — but conservatives, though in disarray and currently viewed as toxic by many South Koreans of all political stripes, still have strong bastions of support in the country’s south, if a charismatic candidate arises.
The qualities of the next leader will help answer another fundamental question: Will the confidence that many won from South Korea’s version of “people power” last?
South Korea is no stranger to rapid, intense change. The country whiplashed from Japan’s colonization to total war in the 1950s, to an economic “miracle” of rebuilding supported by a brutal dictatorship, to one of the world’s most successful democracies.
Just below the surface have always lurked deep social and political divisions — between conservative and liberal, rich and poor, men and women. The entrenched elite often seemed to just chug along, untouched. If they did topple from power or privilege, it was because of violent change, when the streets filled with tear gas and riots, not as in past months, singing, smiling families of all social classes and political backgrounds. Park’s fall may have shattered that pattern. “Now is a critical transition moment,” said John Delury, an Asia expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. “Starting tomorrow, the question is, where does all this energy go? The unifying factor was a focus on getting rid of a problem. Now, they have to figure out, how do you turn that energy into something more constructive than destructive?”
NOW IS A CRITICAL TRANSITION MOMENT ... WHERE DOES ALL THIS ENERGY GO?