Awaiting fate, ‘crushed’ Park grows reclusive
With impeachment vote looming, S. Korean president stays in hiding
SEOUL, South Korea — As the protests against her have grown larger, louder and closer, and her career, reputation and presidency march inexorably toward an impeachment vote Friday, President Park Geunhye has kept mostly hidden from public view, gripped by self-pity and despair, and largely alone.
Cloistered in the presidential Blue House, which in a twist of fate befitting a Greek tragedy is also her childhood home, she has had few visitors, aides said.
Park, 64, has never married or had children. Her brother and sister have been estranged from her for years.
Her three most trusted aides have been fired over the corruption and influence-peddling scandal that threatens to undo her presidency. One has been jailed. Park’s closest friend and confidante, Choi Soonsil, is also in jail.
Park has stopped attending Cabinet and presidential staff meetings. She has been dejected, she said in one public apology, losing “countless nights” of sleep and at times regretting becoming president.
“She has grown noticeably wan,” said Chung Jin-suk, the floor leader of Park’s governing party, Saenuri, who visited her in the Blue House on Tuesday. “She said a few times that she was sorry to our lawmakers.”
Since the scandal broke into public view in October over allegations that Park conspired with Choi to extort tens of millions of dollars from big businesses and to help Choi, who had no official post, manipulate government affairs from the shadows, Park has rarely been seen in public.
She has delivered three televised apologies, each only several minutes long, sometimes choking with emotion.
“My heart is crushed,” she said, “when I think I cannot resolve the deep disappointment and anger of the people even if I apologize 100 times.”
She was said to have heard the weekly protests calling for her to leave office. Those protests have grown from 20,000 people in central Seoul six weeks ago to about 1.7 million on Saturday.
Her aides have declined to discuss her daily routine or her mood these days, except to say that she was taking the crisis gravely and was doing her best to deal with it.
“The president heard the people’s voices with a heavy heart,” Jung Younkuk, Park’s spokesman, said after one of the protests.