SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – The Supreme Court of South Korea on Thursday upheld a 20-year sentence for former President Park Geun-hye for bribery and other crimes when it ended a historic corruption case that marked a striking exhaustion for the first female leader and conservative icon.
The ruling means that Park, who was removed from office and arrested in 2017, could spend a total of 22 years behind bars, following a separate conviction for illegal interference in her party’s candidate nominations ahead of the 2016 parliamentary election.
But the completion of her jail term also makes her eligible for a special presidential pardon, an imminent possibility as the country’s deeply split electorate approaches the next presidential election in March 2022.
President Moon Jae-in, a liberal who won the mid-term presidential election after Park’s removal, has yet to directly discuss the possibility of freeing his predecessor. Moon has recently seen its approval ratings drop to new lows due to economic troubles, political scandals and increasing coronavirus infections.
Many conservative politicians have called on Moon to release Park and another convicted former president, Lee Myung-bak, who is serving a 17-year term over his own corruption allegations. At least one prominent member of Moon’s Democratic Party, Lee Nak-yon, has endorsed the idea of pardoning the former presidents as a gesture of “national unity.”
Park, 68, has described herself as a victim of political revenge. She has refused to attend her trials since October 2017 and was not present at Thursday’s ruling. Her lawyer did not call back to ask for comment.
The demise of Park and Lee Myung-bak badly extended South Korea’s decades-long line of presidencies, fueling criticism that the country is placing too much power that can be easily abused and often falls unchecked into the hands of elected leaders.
Nearly every former president, or their relatives and aides, are embroiled in scandals towards the end of their term or after their term.
A president, the father of Park’s dictator, Park Chung-hee, was murdered in 1979 by his espionage chief. Another former president, Roh Moo-hyun, Moon’s longtime friend and political mentor, jumped to death in 2009 amid allegations that his relatives assumed bribes from a businessman during his presidency.
Kang Min-seok, Moon’s spokesman, said the Park Geun-hye ruling marked the “maturation and growth” of democracy in South Korea, but added that the imprisonment of a former president for crimes was an “unfortunate one. “is history that cannot be repeated. . Presidential officials avoided specific answers when asked about the possibility of Moon pardoning Park and Lee.
Shin Young-dae, spokesman for the Democratic Party, demanded that Park apologize for the “indestructible shame” she had left on the country’s history.
Park was convicted of conspiring with her longtime confidant, Choi Soon-sil, to take millions of dollars in bribes and extortion money from some of the country’s largest corporate groups, including Samsung, while in office from 2013 to 2016.
She was also charged on the charge of accepting illegal monthly money from her spy chiefs taken from the agency’s budget.
After millions of protests over a week, Park was impeached by lawmakers in December 2016 and officially removed from office in March 2017 after the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment.
It was not immediately clear how Thursday’s ruling would affect the legal saga of billionaire Samsung scion Lee Jae-yong. The 52-year-old vice chairman of Samsung Electronics is facing a ruling by the Seoul Supreme Court next week in a retrial over allegations that he bribed Park and Choi to win government support for a 2015 merger between two Samsung affiliates that have strengthened his say. about the country’s largest business group.
Prosecutors are seeking a nine-year jail term for Lee, who has been charged separately for stock manipulation, breach of trust and violations of controls related to the merger. Lee’s attorneys have portrayed him as a victim of the president’s abuse of power, describing the 2015 deal as part of “normal business activities.”
Choi is currently serving an 18-year sentence.
Park was initially sentenced to more than 30 years in prison before the Supreme Court returned her cases to a lower court in 2019.
The Seoul Supreme Court sentenced her to 25 years in prison in 2018 after assessing her together on bribery, extortion, abuse of power and other convictions.
But the Supreme Court in October 2019 ordered the Seoul Supreme Court to consider Park’s bribery allegation separately from other charges, based on a law that requires it for cases involving a president or other elected officials, even when the alleged crimes are combined. committed.
The Supreme Court had given Park a five-year term in July 2019 over the costs of the espionage fund, but the Supreme Court also ordered a retrial of the case in November, ordering the lower court to accuse the lower court of causing losses in state funds more widely. applying. .
Prosecutors appealed after the Seoul Park Supreme Court granted a 20-year term in July last year after merging the two cases.
If Park serves her sentence in full, she will be released in 2039 at the age of 87.