The impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye has no legal foundation, her lawyers argued yesterday, as they submitted their defense against her ouster to the nation’s highest court.
Parliament voted to impeach Park last week over a corruption scandal in which she allegedly colluded with a friend to strong-arm donations from large conglomerates to two dubious foundations.
The case is now being considered by the South Korean Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to rule on the validity of the impeachment that charged Park with multiple criminal and constitutional violations — ranging from bribery to abuse of power.
Photo: AFP
Submitting a 24-page rebuttal to the court, one of Park’s lawyers, Lee Joong-hwan, said the charges lacked any evidential grounds.
“We can’t accept that there was any violation of the constitution by the president ... the impeachment motion should be rejected,” Lee said.
Park has formally been identified as a suspect in what is an ongoing criminal investigation — a first for a sitting South Korean president.
She is accused of ordering aides to leak confidential state documents to her friend, Choi Soon-sil, who has no official title or security clearance, and allowing her to meddle in some state affairs.
Park also faces the looming prospect of having her presidential palace raided by prosecutors, despite the objections of her aides.
“We came to believe that it is necessary to raid certain parts of the [presidential] Blue House,” Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for the team of independent prosecutors on the case, said.
The team has taken over investigations by government prosecutors, who had sought to raid Park’s office in October.
Park’s office has objected to any raid, citing a criminal code that bans any such action on state facilities deemed to be militarily important.
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