The President Of South Korea Was Impeached, Tried And Sentenced To 2 Dozen Years In Prison? What About Trump?

Will Trump be dragged away in handcuffs too one day?

My neighbor Cynthia is very worried that Trump may get impeached by the House, even found guilty by the Senate and that it all ends there. Tomorrow morning I'll tell her about what happened in South Korea-- something to hope for. Park Geun-hye is the daughter of a fascist dictator, Park Chung-hee, who was installed as Korea's president by the military in 1963 and served until he was assassnated in 1979. Before she was elected president, she was head of the right-wing Grand National Party. She was sworn in as president on February 25, 2013 and her party lost its majority in the National Assembly in 2016, the president dragging them down with his sinking approval ratings (30% in 2015 and 4% before she was impeached in December 2016-- an impeachment upheld by the Supreme Court (8-0) in March of last year.

She was arrested for abuse of power, bribery, coercion, and leaking government secrets and thrown into prison in March, 2017. This past Friday she was sentenced to 24 years in prison-- and fined $16,798,683. Her case is viewed as the culmination off public anger over decades of corrupt ties between top government officials and Big Business. Two former presidents also went to prison for the same kind of graft and influence-pedaling as Park Geun-hye so no one really thinks her example is going to stop the corruption in Korean politics. “You cannot end collusive ties between politics and business in South Korea by sentencing a couple former presidents to long prison terms,” said Jun Sung-in, an economist at Hongik University in Seoul, the capital. “Chaebol chiefs have never been properly punished for their corruption.”

In the months before Ms. Park was impeached, millions of South Koreans demonstrated in Seoul calling for her ouster, in the biggest popular uprising since protests in 1987 officially ended military dictatorship. Three decades later, government-business collusion had become the nemesis big enough to bring the populace into the streets.

“Chaebol are accomplices!” protesters chanted.

Many South Koreans still speak proudly of Samsung, Hyundai and other chaebol, whose export-driven growth helped lift the country out of the poverty that followed the Korean War. But over the years, frustration has grown with the chaebol, which are widely accused of stifling smaller businesses as well as doing corrupt deals with government officials.

Ms. Park was convicted on Friday of collecting or demanding $22 million from three chaebol businesses, including Samsung. She was also found guilty of pressuring 18 chaebol companies into donating $72 million to two foundations controlled by Choi Soon-sil, a longtime friend and confidant of the president.

Ahn Jin-geol, a leader of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an anticorruption watchdog, said Ms. Park’s downfall spoke well for South Korea’s still-young democracy.

“We were ashamed that this kind of corruption still happened,” Mr. Ahn said. “But we South Koreans peacefully unseated a sitting president for corruption and had her convicted in a court of law. How many countries in the world can do that?”

But if Ms. Park’s dramatic ouster reflected a vibrant democracy at work, the scandal also unveiled a deeply flawed political system.

For decades, the government has nurtured the chaebol with favors like tax benefits and a buy-Korea policy. In return, past presidents often treated them like personal ATMs, critics say. If they did not oblige, they say, the businesses feared that the government would retaliate through the tax authorities, government regulators and prosecutors.

The donations to Ms. Choi’s foundations, nominally set up to promote sports and culture, seemed yet another example of this phenomenon. The Seoul district court that convicted Ms. Park ruled that she had coerced chaebol into donating to the foundations. The sums were determined according to the companies’ size, according to the ruling, with Samsung contributing the most: $19 million.

Ms. Park also solicited $6.5 million in bribes from the hotel chain and shopping mall giant Lotte, the court found. In return, Lotte’s chairman, Shin Dong-bin, wanted government help in regaining a license to run lucrative duty-free shops, the court said. In February, Mr. Shin was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on bribery charges.

So what about Trump? Impeachment is likely-- especially if Democrats win big and get rid of Pelosi. The idea of the Senate finding him guilt-- unless Mueller finds bags of rubles under his bed-- is unlikely. Prison? It will have to be a lot of bags of rubles... or worse. My gut tells me it could happen.