After 4 years and 9 months of waiting
Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye can finally breathe a sigh of relief
The South Korean government announced on the morning of December 24th
Park Geun-hye will receive amnesty on the 31st of this month
According to Yonhap News Agency Seoul December 24 Japanese report
Former South Korean President Park Geun-hye's lawyer Yoo Young-ha said today
Shortly after South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced
his decision to provide a special pardon to Park Geun-hye
Park Geun-hye expressed her gratitude to Moon Jae-in
This decision happened suddenly and at a special time. Just three days ago, the Ministry of Justice of South Korea held a plenary meeting of the Pardon Review Committee, and Park Geun-hye was not included in the pardon list. There are only three months left before next year's presidential election, and the two candidates from the progressive camp and the conservative camp are evenly matched and facing each other. Against this background, why did the South Korean government “change its mind”? What impact will the amnesty decision have on the presidential election campaign? The outside world is full of curiosity.
Multiple considerations
This is the fifth year-end amnesty during the Moon Jae-in administration. Under his constitutional authority, South Korea's president often pardons prisoners on major national holidays or at the beginning of the new year. According to Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean government held an extraordinary state meeting on the morning of the 24th and subsequently announced a list of New Year pardons, including 3,094 people including former President Park Geun-hye and former Prime Minister Han Myung-sook. As soon as the news about
came out, public opinion was shocked. Firstly, this is in contrast to the Korean government's previous negative stance on pardoning Park Geun-hye; secondly, another former president Lee Myung-bak who is serving a sentence is not included in the amnesty list. " Dong-A Ilbo " stated that when the South Korean Ministry of Justice held a plenary meeting of the Pardon Committee on the 21st to discuss the scale and targets of amnesty, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak were not included in the list. Cheong Wa Dae revealed to Korean media earlier this month that relevant matters had never been discussed. President Moon Jae-in also said earlier this year that it was not the time to talk about pardoning the former president.
Park Geun-hye, 70, is quite controversial in South Korean politics. She served as the president of South Korea from 2013 to 2017. At the end of her term, she was involved in the scandal of "cronies interfering in politics", which triggered a massive wave of protests. She was later impeached and removed by the Congress, becoming the first person in South Korea's constitutional history. On March 31, 2017, Park Geun-hye was arrested by the court; she was subsequently found guilty of 16 charges including bribery, abuse of power, and violation of election laws. In January this year, the South Korean Supreme Court made a final judgment that Park Geun-hye must serve a total of 22 years in prison.
To this day, some progressives are still angry, believing that the scandal involving Park Geun-hye has once again opened up the scars of South Korea's long-standing collusion between politics and business. But in South Korea, Park Geun-hye still has a group of die-hard supporters who hold rallies in downtown Seoul from time to time to defend her. Recently, the ruling and opposition parties, and even within the government, have been divided over whether to pardon Park Geun-hye before next year's presidential election. Politicians and supporters of the largest opposition party, the National Power Party, have repeatedly called for amnesty, and some members of the ruling Democratic Party have also come up with the idea of pardoning the former president "for the sake of national unity."
According to the official statement of the South Korean government and analysis of public opinion, the Moon Jae-in government finally pardoned Park Geun-hye based on three considerations.
"This decision is relatively sudden." Fang Xiuyu, a professor at the Center for North and South Korea Studies at Fudan University, pointed out that Park Geun-hye was impeached and sentenced, which is a special event in itself. In recent years, social divisions in South Korea have intensified, and South Korea will face a presidential election in March next year. Against this background, how to handle this pardon can be said to be a sensitive matter involving a wide range of things, and the president has to consider multiple factors. Judging from the current official news, Moon Jae-in's decision was mainly based on the general principle of "national unity (i.e. unity and cooperation)" and Park Geun-hye's physical condition. It is said that Park Geun-hye has kidney and tooth problems. Some people in the ruling party believe that pardoning Park Geun-hye sends a signal of "unification" and is also beneficial to their own side. There are also claims within the opposition party that currently two former presidents (Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak) in the conservative camp are serving prison sentences, and only one of them has been pardoned, which may be an attempt to create divisions within the conservative camp. What the real situation is depends on what actions Park Geun-hye will take in the future.
Potential Impact
After the news of the amnesty came out on the 24th, Park Geun-hye's lawyer visited the hospital and said that Park Geun-hye thanked Moon Jae-in and his government for their forgiveness and once again apologized to the public for the scandal involved.
As of now, Park Geun-hye has been detained for 1,730 consecutive days, becoming the former president of South Korea who has served the longest sentence. According to Korean media reports, after the amnesty was launched on the 31st of this month, Park Geun-hye, who was receiving treatment in the hospital, did not need to return to the detention center and could go home directly from the hospital.
Outsiders are paying attention to what kind of electoral fluctuations this amnesty decision will cause, less than three months before the presidential election next March. A Gallup poll last week showed that the ruling party candidate Lee Jae-myung and the opposition candidate Yin Xiyue were evenly matched, with support rates of 36% and 35% respectively. Given Park Geun-hye's influence among conservative voters, will her freedom have an impact on the March 9 vote next year?
"Park Geun-hye is good at information politics. She may appeal to the public to support Yun Xiyue to unite the opposition camp." Nikkei quoted a Japanese scholar as saying.
"At present, both the ruling party and the opposition party basically welcome this pardon, but the two parties have different perspectives on the potential impact and have different evaluations." Fang Xiuyu pointed out that the opposition candidate Yin Xiyue was involved in the case involving Park Geun Hye. , some people within the party believe that the effect of pardon should not be over exaggerated. In addition, after Park Geun-hye regains her freedom, the first thing she should do is to recover her body, and then she will consider issues such as meeting with opposition party candidates. Therefore, the impact of the pardon, the direction of the election, and changes in the political situation remain to be seen, and can be approached from several angles.
Source: Shangguan News
