Impeachment of Park Geun-hye (2016)

Fri Dec 09, 2016

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Image: Seoul where a million-scale protest demonstration took place Photo: Lee Jae-Won / Afro

On this day in 2017, following more than a month of anti-corruption protests involving millions of people, the South Korean National Assembly voted to impeach President Park Geun-hye, who was subsequently sentenced to 24 years in prison.

In October 2016, a political scandal erupted over President Park Geun-hye’s undisclosed links to Choi Soon-sil, a woman with no security clearance and no official position, who was found to have been giving secret counsel to the president, access confidential state documents, and use her influence to embezzle funds and win favors for her family and businesses.

After Park, the daughter of former military dictator of South Korea Park Chung-hee, formally acknowledged her connection to Choi, her approval rating sank to a record low of 5% and the population organized en masse against her.

On October 29th, the first candlelight protest was held with about 20,000 participants (estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000). The numbers grew rapidly in the following weeks. On December 3rd, ~2.3 million people hit the streets in a further anti-Park rally, one of the largest in the country’s history.

That same day, three opposition parties agreed to introduce a joint impeachment motion against President Park Geun-hye. The motion passed with 234 out of 300 votes on December 9th, 2016. Park Geun-hye was finally impeached on March 10th, 2017, later sentenced to 24 years in prison.

The South Korean protests of 2016-2017 are sometimes dubbed the “The Candlelight Demonstrations” or “Candlelight Revolution” due to the use of candles during many of the protests, a practice that dates back to 1992 in the country.