President Park Geun-hye "is going to try her darndest to hang on," Elise Hu, bureau chief of National Public Radio in South Korea, told Radio Sputnik. Interestingly, she has every chance to succeed.
"The likeliest scenario is that [Park Geun-hye] is able to hang on because opposition parties here … are not keen on actually starting impeachment proceedings. They don't want it to blow back on them politically in a bad way," she said. "Everybody is playing politics here, which might end up keeping the president in power even though we should mention that her approval rating is at five percent, the lowest in Korean history, for two weeks in a row now. So she does not have the mandate from the public to lead."
Over the weekend, the South Korean capital was rocked by huge protests for the second week in a row, with some estimates calling the rallies the largest political protest in the country's history. They broke out after Park Geun-hye admitted that her friend Choi Soon-sil, who has never held a public office and lacked the necessary security clearance, edited presidential speeches and gave advice on public relations issues.
"South Koreans are particularly upset that Choi Soon-sil had such a seemingly wide latitude to make appointments, to edit speeches, to possibly even make major policy decisions on things like national security and North Korea without having any official position," Elise Hu explained.
Choi Soon-sil "then used her influence to rake in and enrich herself and her family to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. Prosecutors allege that she extorted donations from some of South Korea's biggest companies for the non-profit foundations that she ran," the journalist detailed.
Elise Hu specifically mentioned Samsung, LG Corporation and the Hyundai Motor Company as some of the multinationals implicated in the scandal, which she described as "widening."
In addition, Choi Soon-sil "set up two non-profit foundations in which some of the money was siphoned off for her personal companies," the journalist added.
Although Park Geun-hye "is sticking to her guns and staying in place I do think that we should expect more protests in the weeks to come," Elise Hu said. "There is a lot of hope that this time this will help remove the democratically-elected president."
The journalist mentioned mass protests over US beef in 2008, when South Korean staged weekly rallies for almost two months.
"So I do not doubt that South Koreans will be able to keep this up. They see being able to protest and protest peacefully in big numbers as a measure of how far their democracy has come in the last 30 or so years. This is something they are very proud of and feel hopeful about," she explained.
