Park Geun-Hye

Park Geun-Hye (born February 2, 1952, Daegu, North Gyeongsang do [province], South Korea) is a South Korean politician who served as president of South Korea (2013–17) and leader of the conservative Saenuri (“New Frontier”) Party. She was the first female president of South Korea.

Rise to the presidency

Park Geun-Hye had long been in the spotlight of Korean society as the daughter of Park Chung-Hee, who was president of South Korea until his assassination in 1979. She moved with her family to Seoul in the 1950s and grew up in the Blue House, the South Korean presidential palace. She graduated from Sacred Heart Girls’ High School (1970) and received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Sogang University (1974). In 1974 she became Korea’s first lady after her mother was killed in a failed assassination attempt against her father by an agent of North Korea, and five years later her father was killed by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA; now the National Intelligence Service), Kim Jae-Kyu. After her father’s death, Park Geun-Hye continued to be active in public life by serving as a chairperson of educational and cultural foundations.

In 1998 Park ran for election to the National Assembly to represent the Dalseong district (Daegu region) as a candidate of the conservative Grand National Party. She won by a decisive margin. She was reelected for four more terms as a representative in the National Assembly (1998–2012). She twice occupied the position of chairman of her party between 2004 and 2006. Under her leadership the party achieved important electoral gains against difficult odds in the 2004 general elections, which earned her the nickname “Queen of Elections” in the media. Her career suffered a setback in 2007 when she lost the party presidential nomination to Lee Myung-Bak. In 2011, however, she was appointed to head the ad hoc “emergency committee” that spearheaded the reformation of the Grand National Party into the Saenuri Party, which effectively made her the party chairman once again.

Public opinion on Park was polarized by her family connections. Her father’s legacy continued to divide South Korean society decades after his death; abhorred by many as a brutal dictator, he was celebrated by others as the architect of the South Korean “economic miracle” that followed decades of postwar poverty. In August 2012 the governing Saenuri Party nominated Park as their contender for the December presidential election. Her main rival, Moon Jae-In of the center-left Democratic United Party, was a former human rights lawyer who had been imprisoned in the 1970s for protesting against President Park’s authoritarian regime.

The Park administration

As a presidential candidate, Park invoked her father’s slogan of “Let’s live well,” promising to bring back the high rate of economic growth the country had experienced under his leadership. She also publicly apologized to those who had suffered under his regime. She campaigned as a figure of unity and promised to address the country’s stark income disparities. On December 19 Park defeated Moon with a small majority of the popular vote in an election marked by high voter turnout. As she took office on February 25, 2013, South Korea faced a number of challenges, including high household debt and the ongoing tensions with an often belligerent North Korea.

In April 2014 the Park administration faced its first major challenge with the sinking of the ferry Sewol, in which more than 300 people died. South Korea’s worst disaster since the 1995 collapse of the Sampoong department store, it caused significant political fallout for Park, whose government was viewed as bearing some responsibility for the unsatisfactory handling of the incident. Prime Minister Chung Hong-Won apologized and offered his resignation 10 days after the disaster. The following month Park’s top national security adviser and the director of the national intelligence service both stepped down. Moreover, the coast guard’s poor response during the crisis led to its being disbanded in November.

Scandal and impeachment

Park also faced public protests related to her business-friendly government policies—which were perceived as detrimental to labor—and the requirement that schools use only government-approved history textbooks. These disagreements were eclipsed, however, when a major scandal erupted in the summer of 2016. Korea’s largest newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, reported that a member of Park’s administration had been threatening many large companies with the imposition of audits if they did not donate to two charitable foundations. The companies paid about $70 million to the two foundations, which were later revealed to be connected to Choi Soon-Sil, a close friend of Park’s and the leader of a syncretic religious sect known as the Church of Eternal Life. Korean media obtained evidence that Choi had edited presidential speeches and read presidential briefing materials, evidence of Choi’s influence on Park. Investigators learned that Choi and her associates had enriched themselves at the government’s expense, and Choi was arrested in November 2016. The Korean constitution granted Park immunity from prosecution, but lawmakers began proceedings to remove her from power.

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On December 9, 2016, the National Assembly voted to impeach Park by an overwhelming margin. Her fate rested with Korea’s Constitutional Court, which had up to 180 days to decide whether to allow the impeachment to proceed. On March 10, 2017, the court ruled unanimously to uphold the parliamentary decision, and Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected president to be removed from office. The loss of presidential immunity meant that Park could be prosecuted for corruption in connection with the scandal, and a snap election was to be held within 60 days of Park’s dismissal. On March 31 Park was arrested, and the following month she was indicted on 18 charges relating to abuse of power in her role as president. The most serious charge, bribery, carried the possibility of a life sentence if she were found guilty.

The election to determine Park’s successor was held on May 9, 2017, and, although the Saenuri Party had renamed itself the Liberty Korea Party in an effort to distance itself from Park, the conservatives were crushed. Park’s 2012 opponent, Moon Jae-In, won a convincing victory, and two weeks later Park’s corruption trial began in Seoul. She pleaded not guilty and insisted that the charges against her were politically motivated. Park was held in detention during the trial, and in October 2017 the court ordered that her incarceration be extended until April 2018 in response to concerns that she would attempt to destroy evidence before a verdict was reached. Park’s entire defense team resigned in protest, and the trial was halted while the court sought new attorneys to represent her.

In November 2017, while Park’s trial was ongoing, the Liberty Korea Party expelled her from its ranks, with party chairman Hong Joon-Pyo stating that “it must cast off its yoke as the Park Geun-Hye party.” On April 6, 2018, Park was found guilty of corruption, sentenced to 24 years in prison, and fined 18 billion won ($17 million). In an unprecedented move, the verdict was broadcast live on Korean television. In July 2018 another trial found Park guilty of illegal use of government funds, and she was sentenced to an additional eight years. The following month an appellate court ruled that the April 2018 judgment had not considered the full scope of Park’s corruption; her prison sentence was lengthened by one year, and her fine was increased to 20 billion won. The sentences were to run consecutively rather than concurrently, so Park faced a total of 33 years in prison. However, she was later granted a retrial, and in 2020 her sentence was reduced to 20 years. Prosecutors appealed the decision, but it was upheld by South Korea’s Supreme Court in 2021. Later that year President Moon granted a special pardon to Park, who was released from prison on December 31.