First of all, your story shows the high level of commitment a population has to put to see a corrupted politician being punished, and also faith in the judicial system.
Do you know if anything will be done or can be done to prevent that from happening again?
My impression from loosely following this over the past 4 months or so is that, I feel like what she is being accused of is only slightly worst than what a great number of politicians in Washington DC are considering business as usual. How crooked is the system on Korea compared with the US (or the UK I guess, since you're linking the guardian)?
> Do you know if anything will be done or can be done to prevent that from happening again?
My understanding is that in a democratic system, there is always the risk of putting someone like Park (or a more dramatic example is Hitler) in power. A sign of a well-functioning democracy is whether appropriate social mechanisms exist so that people can freely exercise the power to take back and undo what they think is a mistake. I think history shows the only thing that works to prevent these kinds of mistakes is an informed public, educating the masses, and taking an active role (however small) in social and political matters.
> How crooked is the system on Korea compared with the US?
During the past 10 years in Korea (which was under a conservative government), transparency indices dropped dramatically across the board, e.g. social, financial, political, freedom of press. Transparency International (http://www.transparency.org/) puts out a report every year on government corruption, and in 2016 Korea placed 52nd out of 176 countries (out of the 35 OECD countries Korea placed 29th). For comparison, the US placed 18th and the UK 10th out of 176 countries (Denmark and New Zealand tied for the top spot for being the least corrupt).
The charges ex-president Park faced in the impeachment trial (held in the constitutional court) are different than what she will now be facing in a criminal court. The constitutional court confirmed charges of extortion, abuse of power, and leaking government secrets, which were the basis for upholding the impeachment. Now, having been forced from power and no longer enjoying immunity, the criminal court will decide whether she's criminally guilty of these charges as well as bribery charges from Samsung, Hyundai, SK, Lotte, etc. which carries a minimum of 10 years to a maximum sentence of life in prison.
