Seoul’s first female president rode a wave of sympathy after the murder of her parents; with her removal from office, she ends public life in Nixon-like disgrace
F ormer South Korean president Park Geun-hye had long seemed destined for the history books, though Friday’s decision by the Constitutional Court to remove her from power will not have been the circumstances her supporters envisaged.
As the dust settles on Chief Justice Lee Jung-mi’s ruling that Park’s “unconstitutional and illegal actions” had “betrayed the people’s trust” , her supporters will be left to ponder how the bright politician who began her reign as the nation’s first female president in February 2013 could end it little more than four years later as the nation’s first president to be removed from office by impeachment.
The chaotic scenes that followed the ruling – at least two protesters have died in clashes between her supporters and opponents in central Seoul – were far from the ones of jubilation that accompanied her historic election.
Unlike Hillary Clinton in the United States or Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, Park’s gender was not a unique selling point. Indeed, her very womanhood was questioned because she was 62 at the time, unmarried and without children. But the conservative candidate defeated her opponent, Moon Jae-in, with 51.6 per cent of the vote, winning in all areas except Seoul and the southwestern Jeolla region, the nation’s progressive stronghold.
Looking back, two factors that contributed greatly to her victory were nostalgia for her father, Park Chung-hee, whose brutal dictatorial rule nevertheless brought Korea unprecedented economic prosperity, and sympathy for Park herself, whose parents were both murdered when she was quite young. This perhaps granted her a place in the Korean imagination analogous to that of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Despite this good will, signs of trouble emerged early in her presidency.
Park had begun promisingly enough, reaffirming ties with the US, promising to build trust with North Korea and signing a free trade agreement with Australia. In her famous Dresden speech in March 2014, she even described a path towards Korean reunification.
But that April, disaster struck when the ferry MV Sewol sank en route from Incheon to Jeju, causing more than 300 deaths, mostly high school students. While much criticism focused on the captain and crew – some of whom are serving time for charges ranging from homicide to negligence – it also turned on the government and media for its disaster response and attempts to downplay government culpability.
