This was not supposed to happen in South Korea. It was too divided, too corrupt, too much in thrall to the rich and powerful who’d always had their way. Fo
SEOUL – This was not supposed to happen in South Korea. It was too divided, too corrupt, too much in thrall to the rich and powerful who’d always had their way.
Four months ago, the idea that the country’s leader, along with the cream of South Korean business and politics, would be knocked from command after sustained, massive, peaceful protests would have been ludicrous.
Now Park Geun-hye, thanks to a court ruling Friday, is no longer president and may very well face criminal extortion and other charges. And when he’s not in a courtroom facing trial for bribery and embezzlement linked to the corruption scandal that felled Park, the head of the country’s biggest company, Samsung, sits in jail. And a Who’s Who of once untouchables languishes behind bars waiting for their day in court.
This swift upending of the status quo has so shaken the country’s foundations that it has left people there a bit stunned.
Now comes the hard part.
South Koreans will look to take their peaceful revolution — and the genuine sense of empowerment that many of the average citizens who took to the streets in protest, week after week, now feel at their accomplishment — and turn it into lasting progress.
Among the first of the many big, uneasy questions that linger over this enterprise: What happens next?
In the short term, at least, the answer is more politics, and of the lightning-quick variety. Half a dozen or so candidates will now scramble, over the next two months, for a shot at becoming the next president of South Korea. Elections will likely come May 9.
The current smart money is on a liberal — Moon Jae-in, who lost to Park in 2012 and who now leads in early polls — but conservatives, though in disarray and currently viewed as toxic by many South Koreans of all political stripes, still have strong bastions of support in the country’s south, if a charismatic candidate arises.
