{"id":12596,"date":"2018-08-24T08:24:08","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12596"},"modified":"2018-08-24T08:24:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:08","slug":"appeals-court-gives-ex-korean-president-park-25-year-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12596","title":{"rendered":"Appeals court gives ex-Korean President Park 25-year sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A South Korean appeals court has increased the prison sentence for former President Park Geun-hye<\/a> to 25 years in a case stemming from a far-reaching corruption scandal that ended her rule in 2017.<\/p>\n

Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office when the Constitutional Court removed her over a scandal that landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail.<\/p>\n

The 66-year-old was sentenced to 24 years in prison and an 18 billion won ($16m) fine by a lower court in April in a ruling that the prosecution appealed.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the Seoul High Court found that Park colluded with her friend, Choi Soon-sil, to receive tens of billions of won from major conglomerates to help Choi’s family and fund non-profit foundations owned by her, according to the court documents.<\/p>\n

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WATCH: South Korean President Park permanently dismissed from office (2:25)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

The court also increased her fine by 2 billion won ($1.78m) to 20 billion won ($17.8m).<\/span><\/p>\n

“Such unethical dealings between political power and financial power harms the essence of democracy and distorts order in the market economy, giving the people a grave sense of loss and deep distrust of our society,” presiding judge Kim Mun-suk said in the ruling.<\/p>\n

“A strict penalty is unavoidable.”<\/p>\n

In July, another South Korean court sentenced Park to eight years in prison in a separate case arising from the same scandal, finding her guilty on charges of causing the loss of government funds and interfering in a 2016 parliamentary election.<\/p>\n

Park has been defended by state attorneys after her former defence team quit en masse last year in protest against a Seoul court’s handling of her case, including the extension of her detention.<\/p>\n

Park has been in jail since March 31, 2017, but has denied wrongdoing and was not present in court.<\/p>\n

She returned to South Korea’s presidential palace in 2012 as the country’s first woman leader more than three decades after she left it following the assassination of her father.<\/p>\n

Her removal last year led to a presidential election won by the liberal Moon Jae-in, whose conciliatory stance on North Korea has led to a significant warming of ties with the North.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South Korean appeals court has increased the prison sentence for former President Park Geun-hye to 25 years in a case stemming from a far-reaching corruption scandal that ended her rule in 2017. Park became South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office when the Constitutional Court removed her over a scandal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}