FORMER SOUTH KOREAN LEADER GETS 8 MORE YEARS IN JAIL
SEOUL— A South Korean court sentenced former president Park Geun-hye to eight more years in prison on Friday, in addition to the 24 years in jail that wasmeted on her in April.
The second came after she was found guilty of causing loss of government funds and interfering in a 2016 parliamentary election.
She was earlier sentenced to 24 years in jail for bribery, abuse of power and coercion.
All sentences must be served consecutively if they are upheld, a court spokesperson said.
Park, 66, became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office last year when the Constitutional Court ordered her out over a scandal that exposed a web of corruption between political leaders and the country’s powerful conglomerates or chaebol.
The Seoul Central District Court ruled that Park colluded with her former aides to cause the loss of government funds worth about $26.49 million from the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
The money was from a “special activity fund” allocated to the spy agency, but exempt from state audits or parliamentary reports.
Two of the three former NIS directors involved were sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison last month, and the third to three years.
Dishonored party system
Park was also found guilty of interfering in the ruling party’s selection of candidates for the parliamentary election, breaching the president’s obligations to honor the party system.
“Park’s private use of the funds weakened the principles of executing government funds, and barred the country’s chief spy agency from using the funds for its core duty of protecting the country and the people,” presiding judge Seong Chang-ho said as he delivered the verdict.