A South Korean court is set to deliver its verdict on former President Park Geun-hye on Friday with prosecutors seeking a 30-year jail term over a scandal that exposed webs of corruption between political leaders and the country’s conglomerates.
SEOUL (Reuters) — A South Korean court is set to deliver its verdict on former President Park Geun-hye on Friday with prosecutors seeking a 30-year jail term over a scandal that exposed webs of corruption between political leaders and the country’s conglomerates.
Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office last year when the Constitutional Court ordered her out over a scandal that landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail.
Park’s ouster led to a presidential election won by the liberal Moon Jae-in, whose conciliatory stand on North Korea has underpinned a significant warming of ties between the rival neighbors.
Park, 66, who has been in jail since March 31 last year, is not expected to be in court when it delivers its verdict and, if she is found guilty as expected, hands down a sentence.
Prosecutors are seeking a 30-year sentence and a 118.5 billion won ($112 million) fine for Park, after indicting her on charges that included bribery, abuse of power and coercion.
Park denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
A jail sentence will be a bitter blow for the daughter of a former military dictator, who returned to the presidential mansion in 2012 as the country’s first woman leader, more than three decades after she left it following the assassination of her father.
Park was accused of abusing power in collaboration with an old friend and of pressing companies to pay her tens of millions of dollars in bribes.
