14 March 2017
Last December, former President, Park Geun-hye, was impeached by the parliament. This impeachment required constitutional court’s approval. On Friday, the constitutional court unanimously decided to ratify the impeachment. Following her removal from the office she left the presidential palace to her private home in southern Soul. Now that she is no longer the president, she does not have any constitutional immunity and can be tried on corruption charges.
Her close friend and advisor, Choi Soon-sil, collected millions of dollars from South Korean conglomerates. She is already behind bars for this.
The de-facto head of Samsung, the country’s biggest conglomerate, Lee Jae-yong, paid millions of dollars to Choi Soon-sil, to get the support of the national pension fund, for merger of two companies that would help him hold control over Samsung group. He is also under custody pending investigations of his alleged wrong doings.
Months of mass protests, resulted in the removal of the president from power.  A new president will be elected in 60 days. Park Geun-hye is the daughter of President Park Chung-hee, who was shot by his own intelligence chief in 1979. It was widely speculated at that time that the assassination was engineered by the North Koreans. He was also a corrupt President.