Park leaves Blue House, says truth will be revealed in time
Seoul, March 12: South Korea’s disgraced ousted President Park Geun-hye said on Sunday she felt sorry that she could not finish her mandate and added that the truth about recent events would be revealed in time.
Ms Park, dismissed on Friday after a Constitutional Court upheld a parliamentary impeachment vote, said through a representative, MP Min Kyung-wook, that she took responsibility for the outcome of the events that culminated in her impeachment.
Mr Min spoke to reporters after Ms Park had left the presidential Blue House and arrived at her private home.
Ms Park left the compound in a motorcade of black cars, flanked by police motorbikes, after bidding farewell to staff, an official said. She was heading for her home in the Gangnam district of the capital, Seoul, where hundreds of flag-waving supporters waited.
“President Park Geunhye has just now departed the Blue House and headed for her private home,” a Blue House official said.
Ms Park, 65, is South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office.
Her dismissal followed months of political paralysis and turmoil over the graft scandal that also landed the head of the Samsung conglomerate in jail and facing trial.
Ms Park did not appear in court on Friday and she has not made any comment since. She remained in the Blue House, prompting some grumbling from critics keen to see her stripped of the privileges of power.
Her dismissal marked a dramatic fall from grace of South Korea’s first woman President and daughter of Cold War military dictator Park Chung-hee.
It was not the first time she has had to leave the Blue House. In 1979, after a nine-day funeral following the assassination of her father, the young Ms Park left the Blue House with her siblings for a family home.